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Goodbye Dear Friend

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:49:00 +1300

I spent this week saying goodbye to a dear friend of mine. We've spent the past two and a half years having good times all over New Zealand and my friend has seen me at my best and worst.

Those of you who know me well would have already guessed I'm talking about a mountain bike. In this case it's a green Transition Bottlerocket, built up mid 2007 as a "do everything" trail bike. The Bottlerocket is a sturdy wee beast, made from bridge girders bolted together on industrial sized bearings. The first time I saw one I was instantly smitten, it was exactly what I'd been looking for - a medium travel burly trail bike with a slackish head angle and steepish seat angle. Something that could run big forks yet still pedal uphill, and most importantly something I wouldn't wreck.

It's a funny thing - I don't see myself as a destroyer of bikes; I can't remember the last time I folded a wheel, the last time I broke a frame was in 1994 and apart from tearing a Saint crank off a few years ago cataclysmic failures have been kept at bay. My talent for destruction is a lot more insidious, it involves a war of attrition against bike parts through shear use and a rather cavalier attitude to maintenance combined with an inability to pick smooth lines and torque-tastic pedal stomping.

The pedal stomping in particular has caused me issues, about 10 years ago I gave up on clipless pedals entirely and put flat pedals on all of my bikes. So instead of spinning like a hamster uphill I tend to alternate between a slow spin and mashing the pedals with all my might. This led to difficulties with lightweight frames literally twisting under the onslaught. I know it's not a pretty, smart or clever way to climb but hey, I'm happy with my munterdom.

So naturally I was attracted to the Bottlerocket's ample rear end which offered up a mere 140mm travel, compared to the 180mm+ of it's gruntier freeride cousins. The mid-range travel was another important consideration for me, I wanted enough travel to get me out of trouble but not so much I wallowed around on climbs. While I may have no interest in cross country racing I'm still very aware that energy expended on the climb can't be used to enjoy the downhill.

For me enjoying the downhill is the main reason I'd bother to go up a hill in the first place, sure there's often a view and a sense of achievement but they're just added extras to the main meal. If a ride involves getting to the top of a big gnarly mountain (and to be honest I don't care how I get to the top, whether it's by pedalling, 4WD, helicopter, chairlift, or carrying my bike) and then getting back down again via a challenging yet not entirely pants-filling route it will make me the happiest chap in the world.

With this in mind another appealing factor for the Bottlerocket was that even though the frame only had 140mm travel in the rear it had been designed around a 180mm (7") travel fork. As previously mentioned my ability to pick smooth lines has never been the best and years of riding burly hardtails has given me the rather tenuous theory that if you can get the front wheel through something everything else will follow. So having sizeable forks strapped to the front to handle all the rocks, roots, and stupid mistakes I'd encounter on the way down the aforementioned mountains made sense.

So for most of its life the Bottlerocket was rocking a pair of Totem Solo Air forks with manly 38mm sanctions and a nice 20mm thru axle to keep me on course. Stopping was courtesy of the excellent Magura Louise disc brakes with a 210mm disc on the front and a 190mm on the back. I went for some fairly lightweight wheels compared to the rest of the bike with DT Swiss hubs and Mavic 719 rims. SRAM X9 rounded out the drivetrain with dual ring 36T/24T Husselfelt cranks handling my stomping. The low bottom bracket on the Bottlerocket meant 170mm cranks worked a lot better than the 175mm set I originally ran with the extra 5mm of rock clearance making all the difference.

At a total guesstimate the bike came in around the 35-36 pound mark which is totally fine by me. Some of the more cross country whippet-like amongst you might have a seizure even thinking of riding something this hefty uphill but I can confirm it did climb, surprisingly well considering the total dis-interest it's owner has in climbing up hill. The best measure I can give is climbing up the Rapaki track in 36T without stopping, which is a decent climb of a few hundred metres on the Christchurch Port Hills. Steep technical climbs could become a handful with the high front end and massive forks causing a spot of bother. It basically came down to leaning over the front end as much as possible and yes, it would climb.

On the all day epic front the Bottlerocket would go, and go, and go. On one day we covered 123km around Christchurch, including quite a few brutal climbs. I won't pretend we were fast or there wasn't a lot of pain and sweating involved but the next day I felt fresh enough to knock off another ride on my fully rigid Rocky Mountain Blizzard. So that's a pretty good test, and for context I am wicked and lazy, not some uber fit competitive racer chap.

Along with all day epics I also love technical downhill singletrack and this is one of the places the Bottlerocket is right at home. Get a bit of track, steepify it, cover it in roots and rocks and behold a Bottlerocket and rider happy as a Labrador who's found a dead duck. There's plenty of space in the cockpit to move around and the upright aggressive position is perfect for muscling through the roughies or letting go of the brakes and hanging on for dear life. It was super nice to have a trail bike that was even at home on full blown downhill courses.

Which finally brings me to the sad reason I have to say goodbye; in late 2009 I developed reactive arthritis in my feet which means a full blown downhill course is the last place I should be. At the worst I needed a walking stick to hobble around but after months of some pretty strong drugs and acupuncture I'm back on my bike. The problem is I'm still a long way from cured and while my ankles are fragile I need to watch what I throw at them.

This sadly means I couldn't see myself doing the Bottlerocket justice this year and while I absolutely love riding it I'd find myself tempted to put my ankles into situations where they shouldn't be. This was confirmed yesterday when I found myself plummeting down a 1,500 metre downhill in Central Otago giggling my head off. It was fast, rocky, wide open, loose and a hell of a lot of fun. But had I got bucked off and put my foot down at pace I'd have been in a world of trouble.

It's a tricky line to walk (or ride) - on one side I don't want to hold back from the sort of riding I love, on the other I'm aware that I could seriously set my recovery back if something goes wrong. So trying to be responsible I'm looking at concentrating on the epic side of trail riding rather than plummeting through the roughies. Damn it.

What am I replacing it with? That'll have to wait until another ramble, but I promise it's not totally boring and will still allow me to get out and enjoy technical singletrack, hopefully without getting tempted to throw myself down anything too silly.

So thank you Bottlerocket, I sure will miss riding you but it's time for me to pretend to be responsible and take care of myself. I hope your new owner has as much fun with you as I have. And thank you Transition for understanding people like me and making such a kick arse little bike.

Climate Change in under 1000 words

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:13:00 +1300

Having spent the past 4 months crippled and unable to walk properly I've been reading up stuff and things that interest me. One of these things is the gnarly question of "climate change" and as there's been so much noise about it in the media I thought I'd try and compile where I've got to into something reasonably digestible.

Is the planet warming?

Yes. Millions of measurements taken by thousands of people over hundreds of years show a global trend of warming. The key phrase here is "global trend", parts of the world are affected in different ways; specifically the Northern Hemisphere is warming more than the Southern Hemisphere and the poles are warming more than the tropics. While temperatures may differ between years (due to such cyclic factors as El Nino or one off events such as volcanic eruptions) the trend is upwards.

Does CO₂ cause atmospheric warming?

Yes, and we'd be stuffed if it didn't. CO₂ is a "greenhouse gas" which absorbs infrared radiation and radiates it as heat, warming the surrounding molecules. Without greenhouse gases trapping and radiating heat the earth would probably be too cold to support human life. This has been known about and empirically proven since the 19^th century.

Has the earth ever been this hot or had this much CO₂ before?

Most likely, yes. But probably not during the time of human habitation, and almost definitely not during the time of human civilisation. The earth's temperature and atmosphere has been constantly changing since it was first formed, although these changes normally take place over thousands or millions of years.

Does human activity produce CO₂?

Yes. All animal activity produces some CO₂ through natural respiration but humans have also been burning fossil fuels which release CO₂ into the atmosphere. In the past 50 years the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere has increased from around 315ppm to around 385ppm - most of this is directly attributable to human industry activity.

What else affects the earth's temperate?

Lots and lots of different stuff; most importantly solar radiation from the sun (which is cyclic) but everything from particles in the air from volcanoes and pollution to how reflective the surface is (for example white snow reflects heat) has an effect.

Could "climate change" be a hoax?

To accept that climate change is a hoax you have to also accept one or more of the following; thousands of people have tampered with or misrepresented millions of measurements over hundreds of years to show that the earth is warming; CO₂ does not cause atmospheric warming - even though CO²can be shown to trap infrared radiation and radiate it as heat through empirical science; human activity does not release CO₂ into the atmosphere - which again is scientifically provable.

Why are people sceptical about climate change then?

Here lies the difference between climate change denial and climate change skeptism. To deny that climate change is happening, or is effected by human activity goes against some basic scientific principles, to be sceptical of the level of effect of human activity is an important and normal part of scientific endeavour.

So what is there to be sceptical about?

The climate is an exceedingly complex creature and there is a lot we don't understand about it. Some scientists say the effect CO₂ has on atmospheric warming has been over calculated and external factors such as solar radiation (which as we mentioned before is cyclic) has a far greater effect. Other scientists point to phenomena like clouds, which we have very little understanding of and can also affect the climate. The main bone of contention is the computer models which are used to predict climate change as they are based on the scientific assumptions of the model builders and are limited by our understanding of climate science.

Could scientists of distorted their data or findings?

Yes, but this applies to scientists on both sides of the debate. One of the great problems around climate change is that it polarises people who then take up an entrenched defensive position. This has lead to a few people distorting, fabricating or misrepresenting data to strengthen their position. Most dangerous of all are the climate change deniers who don't have scientific backgrounds and are generally operating from political, corporate or religious ideologies which are threatened by the concept of climate change. Ironically the deniers consistently distort data and findings while accusing their opponents of that very behaviour.

Can we measure the effect human activity has on the climate?

No. We can suggest probable effects based on our current understanding of the climate but at the end of the day we don't know enough to accurately measure our total effect. But, thousands of scientists have published research shown that human activity is having a potentially dangerous impact on the climate if we want to support and feed the current human population.

Shouldn't we wait until we are certain what's really going on?

The problem with this approach is we can never be certain. We will never totally understand the universe we live in and every day our knowledge about it will expand slightly. Science is based on probabilities - nothing is certain and it's very hard to prove anything but the simplest of chemical and physical transactions.

What does this all mean?

To quote Gareth Morgan & John McCrystal from their book "Poles Apart - beyond the shouting who's right about climate change?"

"On the balance of evidence, observations of the natural world would support a coherent theory of why increased concentrations of greenhouse gases due to human activity will produce significant global warming, in which case policy initiatives to address global warming and its consequences are worth evaluating"

Why should we bother?

Very simply if you have children or plan to have children you owe it to them to make sure the world they inherit is the best you can give them. As we've identified on the basis of probability human caused climate change is a threat to this and that's reason enough to make a change.

Getting Started with Facebook

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:48:00 +1300

I am currently working on a number of online projects involving Facebook in one form or another so I thought it would be a good idea to give those of you unfamiliar with the functioning of Facebook a guide to getting started.

Facebook - what is it good for?

Absolutely nothing! I mean, it's a social networking website allowing people to communicate with people they know in a number of ways. It is the most popular social networking website in the world with over 300 million active users and the second most visited website in the world after Google.

The strength of Facebook is users have complete control over who can see what you post so you have the freedom to share with as many, or as few people as you feel comfortable with. This is the major difference from other forms of mass communication such as blogs or forums which are (generally) open to the public

Some ways people use Facebook;

To communicate with their friends using privates messages or online chat
To keep their friends up to date with their activities (known as "Status Updates")
To track down friends they have lost contact with
To share photos, video, and links to other websites
To organize events
To promote or discuss causes
To waste vast amounts of time playing online games

With that out of the way let's look at the Theoretical side and the Practical side of Facebook. If you're champing at the bit to get started just skip to the Practical part.

The Theoretical

Where Facebook Fits Into Communication

In the digital age there are multiple ways to communicate with other people. It is useful to think about communication as active and passive (or somewhere in-between.) The most active form of communication we have as human being is talking face to face, especially if we're naked in bed at the time. From then on communication becomes more passive due to cultural constructs (an incoming phone call holds more importance than a TXT) and technological constraints which prevent people from using the body language and voice inflection we rely on for clear communication.

Most Active Communication

Talking to someone face to face
Video conference
Phoning someone
TXTing someone
Writing someone a letter
E-mailing someone
Mailing a newsletter or group e-mail
Posting on Facebook
Leaflet drop or unsolicited group e-mail
Posting in an existing website or online forum
Posting on your own website
Yelling about something in your basement

Most Passive Communication

As you can see Facebook is on the more passive end of the scale but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There are many situations where this level of communication is very useful indeed;

Say I have a new bicycle or just discovered a really good article on a website I want to share with my friends. I could e-mail everyone on my contact list, but the fact is only a small number of them will care and some might even take offense at me cluttering up their Inbox. I could post something on my website but that would only work if my friends regularly visit it.

Facebook makes a nice middle ground for putting out this sort of information in a semi-direct way which people can engage with or ignore at will. It is also stored in a meaningful way which means if a friend thinks "I wonder what Tama is up to" they can visit my Facebook page and read back through the past posts I have made to find out.

Trust + Communication = Social Media

What differentiates social media such as Facebook (or Twitter etc.) is it operates on interpersonal trust. The corporate influences behind mainstream media have become glaringly apparent to much of the public over the past few decades and now people often question why they should believe/ act on/ buy something rather than simply accepting it as fact from the media.

People generally listen to and trust their friends and family, which is why interpersonal trust is so valuable. So when choosing a product or understanding a current event or issue they are far more likely to form an opinion around what people they know and trust say over random media commentators.

The flipside of this is if people start behaving out of character or forcefully recommending products their trust takes a hit. This is something the marketers are still grappling with but luckily you don't need to worry about that.

Keeping Your Thoughts Private-ish

As mentioned in the introduction Facebook gives people control over who can see their personal information and posts. This can go from "Everyone" through to "Friends Only" (which is the default setting). This allows people a semi-private online place to talk about things that matter to them.

While people may not be keen on talking about something personal (like a new relationship) on their blog for the whole world to see with Facebook they can let their friends, and only their friends know what's going on in their lives. For this reason the concept of "Friends" is the most important facet of Facebook because who people identify as "Friends" directly effects who can access their information.

The Practical

Now we've got the theory out of the way let's get started.

Sign Up to Facebook

First up you need to sign on to Facebook, which is very straightforward. Visit www.facebook.com and follow the instructions on the homepage under the Sign Up heading.

Use your real name, or at least a nickname which your friends would recognise you with. If you want to use a fake name you've completely missed the point of Facebook (trust + security + communication) and should stop right now.
Also use your real gender and birthday, you can hide (or partially hide) these from people, so don't stress about your friends knowing how old you are.

Step 1 - Find Some Friends

Step 1 will normal give you the option of connecting to your webmail (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc) and identifying people on your contact list who're already on Facebook. This is a good easy way to add lots of Friends to your account but the downside is that just because someone is in your e-mail it doesn't necessarily mean they are a genuine friend rather than someone who stiffed you over an online auction. So be careful about selecting everyone off the cuff rather than selecting people on a case by case basis.

Step 2 - Your Schools and Workplace

Step 2 gives you the opportunity to put in your (high) school, university/ college/ polytech and workplace. Entering these in will give you a list of classmates and workmates who are on Facebook with the option to add them as Friends. It's completely up to you about whether you enter these in but it is often a worthwhile exercise.

Step 3 - Upload a Photo

Step 3 asks for you to upload a photo. Choose a nice clear photo of your face which people will recognise, or at the least something representative of you and your personality. Your photo will appear next to your activities and many people will use it as a visual reference so having a photo which isn't of you gets in the way of people interacting with you. Again we're back to the principal of trust.

Just a note that the general public will be able to see your photo so make sure it's not too embarrassing or personal. You don't need to upload a photo right away so if this seems all to hard or scary skip this step and come back to it later.

You're Ready To Go - Now What?

Yes, that is it - you're ready to go. So now what? First up spend a bit of time filling in your profile information. You can select how much detail you want to be shown so if you want to hide your gender or birthday (or at least remove the year) you can do it here.

There's a lot of menus and options on the Facebook so if you're feeling a bit overwhelmed check out this helpful guide: http://hubpages.com/hub/facebookforbeginners (although Facebook sometimes changes its layout so this will become out of date.)

People who you've requested as Friends will need to accept before you can see their information. This might take a day or more so don't worry if your Facebook starts off looking quite empty. Once people have accepted you as a Friend your "News Feed" will start to fill up with what your friends are up to which leads us to the next big step.

Interacting on Facebook

This is the biggie and there's absolutely no rush here. The best approach is to start off simple and work your way up until you find a level to be comfortable with.

Spectate: First up just have a look around at what your friends are up to, what photos they're posting, and how their friends comment and interact with them. There's no rush, take as long as you like.
Like: Facebook allows you to signal your approval of a friends status, photo, link, video etc. by clicking "Like". This is an excellent way of giving feedback without having to think of anything witty or interesting to say. It also gives positive feedback to your friends and lets them know that you're around and interested in what they're up to.
Comment: If a friend of yours posts up something which tickles your fancy or draws a reaction from you why not let them know with a comment? Maybe they've put up some photos of their kids who've grown up heaps since you last saw them, maybe they're sick at home, maybe they've linked to a video that made your day. Click "Comment" and write a short comment about what they've posted.
Status Update: The main way people interact on Facebook is by posting Status Updates to their "Wall" by using the "Publisher" (normally a box containing "What's on your mind?"). These are normally one or two sentences about what they are up to or how they are feeling. A good start is something along the lines of "Finally on Facebook, still getting my head around it" which is bound to get some sympathetic responses and tips from your friends.
Link to websites: When you come across an interesting article, amusing video, insightful blog post, or something else you'd like to share with your friends you can link to it from your Facebook Wall. Posting link should automatically create a thumbnail and description of the website along with an "Attach" button to add it to your post.
Upload some photos or a video: Clicking in the "Publisher" (normally a box containing "What's on your mind?") should produce a number of small buttons allowing you to uploading photos, video, events, or links. You can use these to share photos of your holidays, parties, or just random photos of what you're up to.

Of course there's a lot more ways of interacting on Facebook but if you've got this far you're off to a good start. And if you didn't get the whole way through the list above don't worry about it, not everyone contributes to Facebook, some just spectate.

Facebook Pages

My main reason for writing this guide is because I've started to use Facebook "Pages" for a number of projects with groups of other people who aren't confident or experienced with Facebook.

A "Page" is a way of giving a business, group or cause a presence on Facebook. People become "Fans" of Pages and then posts on that Page will appear to you. Pages are a great way of organising groups with common interests and can be used to post upcoming events or discuss things of common interest.

To find a page type something relevant into the search box at the top of the screen and click "Pages" in the left-hand column next to your search results. To become a Fan of a Page click the "Become a Fan" button. Once you are Fan of a Page you can visit it by typing in the name in search box (it will autocomplete the fullname) or going to Profile -> Info

Importantly Pages offer the ability to have "Discussions" which are mini forums and often a far better way to talk about things online than using group e-mails and "Reply to All".

Summary

Facebook is a powerful online tool but it doesn't need to be overwhelming or scary. Dip your toes in and follow through the Interacting on Facebook steps until you find a mode you're comfortable with. Have fun!

And finally, our friends at The Onion let us in on what Facebook is really used for:

ACC is Fine - Seeing Through the Spin

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:47:00 +1300

In October 2009 the Accident Compensation Corporation posted a $4.8 billion dollar loss, which was referred to in the media as "the biggest corporate loss in New Zealand's history". There was of course a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and many ideas were mooted as ways to deal with this loss, including introducing an excess, reduced coverage, substantial levies rises, privatisation and the opening up to small or all of ACC's services to competition.

This has caused the inevitable protests and letters to the editors as certain user groups rally against the proposed changes that will affect them directly. Unfortunately this has also caused rifts and finger pointing as user groups who feel themselves unfairly targeted (like motorcyclists) question why other user groups (such as cyclists) have "escaped" the proposed changes.

While at some point there does need to be discussion of what ACC should cover, how it should be paid for and the pros and cons of privatisation/ competition this needs to happen outside of the discussion of the "$4.8 billion loss" because if you dig a bit deeper it turns out there may not be a loss at all.

The 2009 ACC Annual Report states that in the last financial year ACC received $4.1 billion dollars in levies and has $23.8 billion dollars in claims liability which sounds pretty dire. If you consider that this equates to over $5,500 per New Zealander in claims liability it all raises the question of what "claims liability" actually means.

It turns out that "claims liability" isn't just about covering claims over the past financial year; it means covering future claims in a "pre-funded" model. Dr Michael Cullen introduced this during the previous Labour Government with the legislated target of 2014 for ACC to become a fully pre-funded entity when the global economy was booming and we as a nation could afford such things.

With the current economic climate the 2014 target for full funding is not looking good - hence the announcement of the $4.8 billion "loss". To be fully funded right now ACC would need reserves of around $24 billion, at the moment reserves are around the $11 billion dollar mark.

To put this all into perspective if you dig through the ACC Annual Report you'll find (on page 85) that in 2009 ACC received $4.1 billion in levies (with a total cash income of $4.6 billion) and paid out $3.4 billion* in claims - a surplus of $700 million between levies and claims.

So, what we have is a corporation that has $11 billion in reserves and makes an operating surplus around the billion dollar mark which apparently in "crisis" and in need of major increases to cost, decreases to service - and possible privatisation/ opening to competition for it to survive?

Give us all a break.

To make the whole matter even more galling payments to another Cullen pre-funding initiative the "Cullen Fund" for superannuation were suspended in the 2009 Budget. So the National government already has a prudent way for dealing with issues like this during the Recession - put them on hold.

In the plainest English possible: postponing the pre-funding requirement for ACC until better economic times would solve the problem with ACC balance sheets (if a problem exists).

My concern is that if we as a country buy into the spin of an "ACC blowout" that is being fed to us and respond accordingly we run the risk of making decisions which will put in jeopardy the core concept of ACC - almost total cover in exchanging for losing the "right" to sue. As a keen mountain biker and outdoors enthusiast I would hate for us to move into a culture of lawsuits and blame that exists in countries such as the U.S.A.

For more indepth reading on the financial nitty gritty from mainstream media:

Brian Fallow - NZ Herald Economics Editor: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10561167&pnum=0

October 24^th-30^th 2009 - Listener Editorial: http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3624/columnists/14242/future_shock.html

* Often quoted as $3.1 billion in the mainstream media which suggests I might be missing something

Things I have learned on the Internet

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:00:00 +1300

I can see where the luddites were coming from sometimes, if I'd known how retarded the internet would become I probably would've thrown my computer out of the window. I sometimes despair about where the internet is heading, something which began as an awesome way to easily share a crapload of informative content has now become the best way for billions of people to check out what their favourite celeb has left in the toilet bowl via twitter.

I mean really, is this the best we can do?

Probably. You are checking out channel-six so we're off to a bad start.

I've been thinking about my own browsing habits and how I use the internet lately and I thought I'd share some random thoughts I've had. I would also like to mention I have figured these out through personal experience more than anything, so I'm sure as hell not holier-than-thou.

1. Think of the internet like your local library. - Frequently the most popular websites are often like the women's weekly that sit near reception, brain-dead, vapid and offering little, if any substance. The good sites are like the old tomes down the back in the dark corner, they may not look the best but they're full of cool information you won't find anywhere else.

Of course if I insist on using this metaphor then it should be mentioned that all local libraries would have a pornography sections that would easily outstrip the fiction and non-fiction sections put together.

2. Never, NEVER ask for advice related to anything you have a significant emational investment in on an online forum. - You may be expecting a heart-felt, earnest reply. What you are going to get is shit. You have friends in real life, right? Talk to to them! If you don't have friends call a help-line! Talk to people who are qualified to deal with what you are dealing with.

If it is true that misery loves company, then dysfunction is the biggest fucking frat-party known to the universe. Are you having problems with your significant other? Then taking advice online from a person you've never met called Terry* is probably a bad idea.

*Terry is an ex-con, has been through four marriages and is a big fan of putting people down holes and getting them to rub lotion on themselves.

3. Pommer's Law - A person's mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be: From having no opinion to having a wrong opinion. Want to see this in action? Visit the trademe forums. Pommer's Law is a commentary on the amount of shit out there and the number of people who will believe it at the drop of a hat. If the world was a better place, the majority of people would go out and search for relevant information from a variety of sources. Instead, without any conscious thought whatsoever they hit the search box on Wikipedia and become...

4. Wikidemics - Someone whose seemingly-omniscient, categorical knowledge of any and every subject is derived solely from superficial wanderings through Wikipedia. Don't get me wrong, Wikipedia is like smack to someone like myself looking to fill in holes of information on things I am interested in. Thing is, you should really treat it like a band-aid and your knowledge like a wound. If your knowledge is scratched, band-aid it. If it's a giant gaping gash to the cartoid artery then that shit is going to bleed out no matter how many stickies you throw on it. Use sites like Wikipedia to supplement your knowledge, don't make it the base.

5. The internet is the anti-christ - No. It's not. It would be kinda nifty if the internet did go all skyNET on us and Google renounced it's 'don't be evil' mantra by creating a bunch of cyborgs to wipe us out though. James Cameron could safely sit underwater in his submarine stronghold that he's been secretly building saying "HAH! I TOLD YOU SO! I'M THE KING OF THE WORLDMUWHAHAHAHAHA!... they can swim? THEY CAN SWIM!?! NOOOOOOOooooooo!"

6. You are awesome - no really, you are. Don't let any keyboard jockey tell you otherwise. You are not awesome if you think having a keyboard gives you license to act like a drooling mongtard and pass judgment on everyone who has a slightly different point of veiw to yourself.

Damn, I feel like such a hypocrite. At this point I'd like to thank the internet and the sites mentioned above for the inspiration it has provided me with while drafting this article.

A Hell of a Commute

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:59:00 +1300

Currently my partner and I have jobs in separate cities until the end of the year - which means most of the time we're kept apart by 400 kilometres and a decent mountain range. So seeing each other regularly involves a hell of commute whichever way you look at it.

Being the more masochistic driver of us two I've been driving down every second weekend or so to see her. From the outset this seems quite doable but bookending a busy working week with 800km of driving winding 2 lane roads takes it out of even the most battle hardened road warrior.

Luckily I've got company; early on in the exercise I stumbled across the carpooling website www.jayride.co.nz and discovered a chap in exactly the same circumstances than me. So every second weekend we hop in one of our vehicles, and talk shit solidly for five hours as the white lines flash by.

Driving by myself got old real quick, even a good selection of music wasn't enough to save me from early onset dementia as I talked to myself, chuckled at the stupidest things, and vainly hoped that there'd be a hitchhiker at the next town - even if they were covered in blood and had stars tattooed under their eyes.

The other saving grace is we have two routes to choose from - one through the centre of the South Island over the majestic Lewis Pass, the other down the picturesque east coast. Both of them dish up the sort of scenery favoured by tourism marketing boards and postcard manufacturers and nicely water down the inevitable grind through farmland at either end of the trip.

So well it may be a hell of a commute it could be a lot worse - I could be doing it solo and driving through hours of pastoral dullness punctuated by 50kph zones through indistinguishable service towns (I'm referring to a number of New Zealand roads here.)

Anyway, for me the payback of seeing her is well worth the road miles - let's call it a odyssey rather than a commute

All Crackheads must die

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:16:00 +1300

I come to you live from my living room table, looking out onto my gloriously manicured lawn on a reasonably overcast day in Dunedin.

With a head full of snot.

I've been popping a few 'new formula' cold and flu tabs and lo and behold, nothing. Standing in the shower for ten minutes has more effect. While standing in the shower all day does have its appeal there are the inevitable side-effects of wrinkle-age and my laptop didn't like it the last time I took a shower with it.

The new anti-P legislation reeks of knee-jerk reactivity. Everyone is in no doubt that the stuff is evil and something desperately needs to be done, but I thought penalising the majority with another peice of poorly thought-out policy for the sake of a few losers looking for a hit was best attributed to Labour's so-called 'nanny-state' thinking (shudder) that was supposedly booted out the door with the arrival of Mr Key and his band of free-thinking men and women.

Another idea. Project STOP has been working in Australia for a while now, was this in the too hard basket?

Either way, instead of a five minute stroll to the pharmacy and $25 payment I'm now looking at a half-hour wait in some waiting room, a fairly drawn out consultation to eastablish I'm NOT a crackhead (which I'll pay forty or fifty bucks for) before going to the pharmacy to pay the same price for the product I used to have easy access to.

It may get me stabbed, but the next time I see a P-head I'm going to give them a peice of my mind. Wankers. Every single one of them.

Then again, I probably won't care next week when I can breathe properly again.

Least Boring PS3 Games Reviewed

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:53:00 +1300

For many blokes having the excuse to sit home for a day of uninterrupted Playstation is a rare treat. After some surgery that left me pretty much immobile I discovered that if that’s all you can do for weeks on end it rapid loses its “treat” status. On the positive it gave me a chance to exhaustively test my collection of games to see which one could hold my attention the longest.

It should be mentioned that I've been holed up in a seaside village with marginal internet at best so sadly online gaming was out. Without further ado here’s a breakdown of the games that kept on giving, day after day after day...

Oblivion [reviews]

This is an unashamed sword and sorcery hackfest played from a first person perspective in the sprawling land of Cyrodill. After the initial character setup and tutorial dungeon run you’re then free to go and do pretty much whatever you want.

The strength of the game is even when you’ve been wandering around in it for hundreds of hours you’ll still stumble across places to explore in the vast and quite picturesque wilderness. The weakness is you can spend hours wandering aimlessly and never really achieve anything – it can be like going to the mall except you’re wearing armour and can make fireballs shoot from your finger tips.

There’s a plethora of quests to do and interesting story lines to flow but none of them have a sense of urgency. Turning up at a city invaded by demonic monsters you can promise to help and then bugger off for weeks happy in the knowledge the town folk will be waiting patiently for you to save them after you’ve finished picking flowers and doing up your house (yes, in game – I’m not kidding).

Anyone who’s played Oblivion for long enough becomes aware of what works and what doesn’t. With this in mind it becomes relatively easy to make a character that can storm their way through dungeons leaving a trail of looted corpses behind them. Like so...

You can of course add challenge by acting completely irresponsibly as the shear flexibility of the game would allow you to take on a goblin army while drunk in only your underwear* - but who’s going to do that when they know they could be kicking arse?

Quibbles aside this enormous flexibility is what makes the game so captivating; you can create your own character and spend hours developing them in an infinite number of ways. I found myself lying in bed planning my next character and thinking about where they’d explore and would then spend literally hours working to achieve complex tasks I’d set myself.

Thank you Oblivion for occupying me for weeks of mindless escapism.

Grand Theft Auto Series [reviews]

OK, I admit it – I’m a fan boy of the GTA series and tend to dribble every time Rockstar Games even hint at bringing a new major title out. But this was a big test and I found GTA wanting compared to Oblivion.

Firstly the older titles in the series looked a bit crappy on my Sony Bravia so even though I’ve happily spent a couple of hundred hours messing about in GTA San Andreas over the years I’ve got too used to the glossy graphics of the Playstation 3 titles and found myself shying away from retro clunky look the old games have.

Secondly even though I got quite a few days out of GTA 4 which is an incredible game on so many levels the fun factor was gradually eroded by the constant in game phone calls your character gets from his chums. There’s something intrinsically irritating about being interrupted in game by your fictional cousin who wants to play darts when all you want to do is jump sports cars over motorways or bait cops. Make them stop calling me, please.

Red Faction: Guerrilla and Saints Row 2 [RF reviews] [SR2 reviews]

Both of these games are also open world sandbox games and come out of the same development house. In Red Faction you drive around Mars destroying large amounts of building in exceptionally satisfying and creative ways. It’s hugely fun for a while but after you’ve levelled a hundred buildings or so you do start to wonder if there’s more to the game than that. There is, but it’s not as fun as blowing up buildings - at which point my attention waned.

Saints Row 2 puts you into a present day city in a fully customisable character (my first was a morbidly obese balding cockney who drooled and liked wearing women’s swimsuits) and removes pretty much all consequences from your actions. Much chaos and violence enthuses. The side missions in particular are hilariously creative from impersonating police officers to spraying poo over buildings to flashing old ladies to throwing adoring fans in front of trains. My main problem with the game is compared to GTA4 it looks and feels a bit low rent. If you could get a game that combined the aesthetics and control of GTA4 with the lunacy of Saints Row 2 I’d probably be playing it right now instead of typing this out.

So that’s me – honourable mention should go to Infamous(reviews) which combined awesome gameplay with an engaging narrative which kept me spellbound for a few days. My surprising omission is Fallout 3(reviews) whose post apocalyptic world I found too grim and relentless for days stuck indoor but is still a great game. And dishonourable mention goes to Final Fantasy XII(reviews) which is supposed to be an epic adventure but for me was just a dull grind which I couldn’t even be bothered finishing populated by disturbing sexualised/ cutesy cartoon characters.

As I’m on the mend and summer is knocking at the door I hope my Playstation will be gathering dust for the next few months – that and I’m pretty much gamed out.

*I must admit I might have to try this.

Click the Ads You Hate on the Websites You Love

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:49:00 +1300

Sometimes our daily interweb surfing experiences a plague of biblical proportions as a handful of similar ads seemingly take over every website we visit. Then tend to be garish, crass, and of absolutely no interest to us – so what do we do? Block them? Ignore them? Or is there a better way? I think so.

First off let’s look at the “block” option where you use a browser plug-in or other technical wizardry to block adverts from appearing on your computer. While this is no doubt effective it does raise a sizeable problem. Realistically the majority of income for online publishers still comes from advertising and too many people blocking online adverts will seriously impact on the publishers ability to cover their costs let alone make a profit. This leads to either the publisher finding more insidious ways of advertising, charging for content or shutting up shop – none of which are to your personal benefit if you happen to enjoy visiting their websites.

So is there another way beyond ignoring the ads (which many of us are very good at) let’s pop the bonnet of internet advertising and have a look. The three most common advertising plans for banners follow:

CPM (Cost Per Mille): This is where advertisers pay for banners in blocks of a thousand, so the publishers get paid for every banner they display to visitors. This is most commonly used for big campaigns in the mainstream advertising industry.

CPC (Cost Per Click): This is where advertisers pay a certain amount everytime a banner is clicked. This is most commonly used for “performance networks” where advertisers bid certain CPC rates to get their banners onto sites sitting inside advertising networks.

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): This is where advertisers pay an amount or commission when visitors click through on the banner and then carry out a predefined action, like buying something, signing up for newsletter or registering on a website.

Saturating the internet using the CPM model is an incredibly expensive exercise, so when you’re eyeballs are constantly being assaulted by the same adverts again and again (and again) you can bet that they’re using CPC or CPA prices. Most of the time we can discount CPA as publishers hate it as traditionally it has woefully bad returns and they will (or at least should) generally only take CPA campaigns that will fly.

This leaves us with the humble CPC, where publishers are paid every time a visitor clicks a banner. As mentioned many CPC systems are run on a bid system where advertisers specific the amount they will pay per click along with their total advertising spend. Generally the ads with the highest pay per click which have money left in their spend will be displayed – now have a think about the implications of this.

That’s right – if an advertiser says “We will pay a lot of money per click and have a lot of money to spend” you are going to be seeing a lot of their ads. More to the point if hardly anyone is clicking on their ads their advertising spend is not going to be going down that quickly – which means you are going to be seeing a lot of their ads for longer.

Which brings me to my main point “Click the ads you hate on the websites you love” – if you click these ads not only will the publishers who produce the content you enjoy get money (sometimes a couple of bucks a click) but the advertising spend of the offending advertisers will decrease meaning the end of their ads will inch closer. It also impacts the ROI (return on investment) for this style of carpet bombing advertising which will hopefully encourage more thoughtful, targeted approaches.

A word of warning – before you rush off to click banners dozens of times please keep in mind that most ad delivery systems have systems in place to detect exactly this sort of carry on. One click per ad per website per day is the maximum you should do.

Disclosure: While I have previously worked in the online industry for many years, at the time of writing (October 2009) I am not involved in any commercial websites. This is probably a good thing as the terms of use from most ad networks forbids their publishers from giving the advice I’ve just given.