Something for the library geeks (although you probably already have it)
LibraryTechNZ blog
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And for the postgrads (via RWW)
Deep Dyve (the scientific journal search engine) Launches Rental Service for Research Articles

Buying a single article from a scientific journal is usually prohibitively expensive if you are not a student or teacher at a school that subscribes to the journal. Most academic journals are available only behind these paywalls, but Deep Dyve just announced a new product that could radically change the marketplace for scientific, technical and medical articles. Until now, Deep Dyve only indexed articles and directed users to the journal's own site. Starting today, users can rent articles from Deep Dyve. Accounts start with a pay-as-you-go account, by which users are charged $0.99 to keep an article for one day, and go up to an unlimited account for $19.99 per month.

Not the complete Herald title (slashes), but funnier in a sick sort of way. I'm left wondering whether someone at the Herald is clueless, or has the right sense of humour.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10603341 , or the original, http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6872873.ece

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, said there was no good reason for them.

"Really, if you think about it, it doesn't need the //. I could have designed it not to have the //", The London Times reported.

He said he could not have predicted 30 years ago that the two small marks would cause so much annoyance.

"There you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time," he said.

http://tvnz.co.nz/20-20-news/coming-up-20-having-larp-3047776/video

Apparently 20/20 did a segment on LARPing this week. It's about 13 minutes, and a really positive portrayal.

HT: adrexia via FaceBook

In the comments to my Rayne does TED post* adrexia inadvertently touched on an interesting point.

We're one or two technology breakthroughs away from dropping the cost of production and distribution of manufactured goods (like cars) to practically nothing relative to current expectations. Are we then going to start seeing the same sorts of issues around material products that we currently see around mp3s online?

If so, hadn't we better take the opportunity to sort them out while the only rubbish we have to worry about is electronic? Or will they sort themselves out through the business models developed for intermediary products like print-on-demand?

I'm not thinking matter transformation ala Star Trek, but supply pattern + raw material to fabber, stand well back seems reasonable within 10-15 years commercially. It's already being done in limited instances.

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* an unusually busy (but profitable :) ) work week diverted me from joining in the conversation, sorry guys

*I wasn't too surprised that it was the piracy aspect that was taken up rather than the fear aspect.

Over at Public Address guest columnist Anke Richter explains from a German POV why events such as the recent Lincoln University party are so offensive.

http://publicaddress.net/default,6206.sm#post

If you have a grown up in Germany, then the Third Reich is not about winning or losing. It's not about military accomplishments, Hogan's Heroes or Dam Busters. It's about human tragedy and atrocities of the worst possible kind. It's shameful, and it's painful, and it's impossible to grasp in its monstrosity. Your grandparents were either victims, perpetrators or witnesses. Your parents -- some not even born at the time -- were affected by it as the surviving or post-war generation. They were in denial or became overtly political.

Well, I'll be at the Sci Fi Soc quiz night, but I learnt about this through an article in Stuff today.
http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=9847800806

BATTLE CRY
Where: MAJESTIC HOUSE
cnr of Lichfield and Manchester St
Christchurch
When: Wednesday 30th Sept 2009
7PM
Price : $5 pre tickets, $10 at the door

A suicide awareness event.
...
Yes its a show with awesome performers, but its also to bring the awareness of suicides in NZ and the world to peoples attention. Will you stand with me in saying that our suicide rate needs to cease to exist?? . . . ... .. . .

Last week the Least I Could Do webcomic (N always SFW) ran a series of strips which had one of their main characters (Rayne) doing a TED talk. (TED.com - Ideas worth sharing)

It starts with a premise that "the world we live in is driven by a sense of fear and a sense of entitlement"

5 strips, starting here
Follow-up blog post by the author of the strip

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As a tangent, last week in the NZHerald Anthony* Doesburg asked Faster, wider bandwidth - but what will we do with it? He didn't answer the question directly, but I'd like to suggest that even getting the majority of the country on the same sort of speed I'm accustomed to (4Mb/s) would open up access to things like the TED talks. (OK, also need much cheaper data rates because y'know, streaming video glug glug glug).

*the fact that no-one at the herald has bothered correcting the blatant typo in his name in the headline irritates me.

Gosh, do I have a sense of entitlement about fast, cheap broadband? Probably, but I believe the benefits are so great that it need to be designated a public good* like electricity and in earlier years the telephone.

*I know I'm not using the proper economic definition here, but I can't recall the correct term. Nationalised good?

via roleplayingtips.com -

http://www.godeckyourself.com/ (beta)

From the same person who has been maintaining the RedBlade D&D character manager for years, a new project. Make custom CCG size cards in a variety of styles and download them as .pdfs for printing.

It's still pretty rough around the edges, but there's a lot of potential. I would have used this to generate the item handouts for NeverWinter had it been available (in fact I recreated some of them as a test deck).

The pdfs generated here could be combined with a service like scribd.com for wider distribution/webpage embedding.

via the Friday Spoing!

http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/09/07/labor-day-challenge-wrestle-your-work-back-into-its-box/

Most of the people I know who are willing to sacrifice downtime for uptime define themselves, to a large degree, by their work. They are their business, or their profession, or their role within their organization. Left without their RSS feeds, emails and task lists, they’re at a loss to identify with the person they actually are. Unless they’re responding to the latest email or tweeting about their new product launch, they feel they don’t exist.

I say often that I don't feel right unless I'm working on something. Reading this it feels right to narrow that down - If I'm not doing something, I feel like I don't exist.
( more more more )
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Last time my rut ended at the edge of a cliff & for a short time I flew. Where did that feeling go?

So it's eDay this Saturday and Christchurch actually has a drop-off point this year. Unfortunately I'll be out of town.

Fortunately Christchurch has Molten Media, because I have a hallway stacked with old computer bits which need to be cleared - now before mid-November :D Does anyone else have old computer parts they'd like to include in the load (which will happen ... sometime before mid November)?

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Sometimes I think there's hope for our judicial system. Last week the Herald published an article on a therapeutic justice youth court in Auckland targeted at the kids who are assessed as likely to become among the country's worst future offenders.

There's another 'problem solving' court in Christchurch which I read about a while ago targeting drug offenders. They're not always successful but nevertheless still getting results which beat the financial and social expense of locking these kids up for the rest of their lives.

It's probably going to take a culture shift in NZ before these courts get the support they deserve, as a country we still seem to be wedded to an 'out of sight out of mind - lock 'em up' approach to dealing with those who break the law in a serious fashion.

Again with the voluntarily up @ 7 and a run??!
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Mother met with the 'big wigs' this morning. Brother 'v v v lucky'. C1 vertebrae exploded outwards. Some spinal cord damage but all in place.

In Middlemore until it settles and then he'll be transferred down here to Burwood.

Wikipedia article on the "Jefferson fracture"

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LJArchive link for those I promised it to. I do recall I had to download and initialise something else, maybe a .dll, to make it work on my (Windows XP) system originally.

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So after my energetic start to the day I've done the invoicing, laundry, dishes, and caught up on a certain amount of online reading (bulked out by the fact that several of the articles I had set aside were lists of links to start with...). OTOH, it's nearly 3 o'clock and I'm just getting around to lunch....

New CSS and PHP tricks I has them, but brain has started to feel a bit mushy. Since I've actually been more-or-less awake since ~5:30am, I think a nap might shortly be in order.

( Wrong end of the stick: TelstraClear you haz it )
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( Christchurch will be the location for the first business offering jetpack flights )
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( John Key to businesses: We'll pay you to make our youth unemployment figure look better )
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Finally (and not 'current affairs' for a bit of variety):
Makers schedule, Managers scehdule

One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they're on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more.

There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals.
...
But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.
...

I'm totally on the Makers schedule. And today has been a frustrating example of having what I planned screwed over by people on the Managers schedule.

Mad Science party at the Dollshouse


Some bright light:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWqHoKxFmo8

Note: I upgraded to Firefox 3.5 yesterday and discovered that it's colour management does nasty things to my photo galleries. This is a combined browser/monitor (and possibly camera/Picasa/SmugMug) issue and can be solved in about:config as per this support ticket or with this colour management add on.

x-posted: my journal, kaosians

Having an actual reason to get out of bed on time is good for me. In addition to helping N&N move furniture down & up stairs first thing I've also managed to knock a number of other outstanding tasks off my to-do list. I will have to take a nap before the party tonight tho'. Remember Mad Science starts at 7!

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( some other introspective bits I've been meaning to post )

Youtube

I'm so grateful that it's not just a remake of the old one, but it doesn't really grab me. S'pose it might grow on one (like a fungus).

Telethon song re-recorded for Big Night In

I'm of the opinion they should have done something new.

Via The Chief Happiness Officer, Thoughts from the C train has an anecdote about dealing with one of those customers

I got called that one time. Swear. Say it: Phenomenal Cesspool of Incompetence. It's brilliant! I mean seriously, who can come up with that shit? Well I'll tell you who . . . kind of.

I'm not so much interested in the article, but in the fact that it's made mention in the mainstream media. Slow news day, gamer at the Herald or RPGs no longer niche?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10579328

SEATTLE - Eight people face accusations they illegally posted the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons' newest handbook for download on the internet.

John Roughan in the Herald, after getting some insulation put in.

Two days after the Budget the installer returned to put in some final brackets and I said I guessed his business must be booming on the subsidy just announced.

Like hell, he replied. It had completely ruined his cash flow. Of the 28 orders on his books before that Thursday, all but two had cancelled.

The rest were going to wait for the Government's grant next month and most of them, he reckoned, were waiting in vain; the job they wanted would not be nearly enough to qualify.
...
"Eeca", as the authority is already known to my insulation man, prefers firms large enough to meet its Maori employment quota among other criteria he mentioned.

He described an industry thrown into disarray and said he would find someone to say so publicly, but hasn't. Half a dozen insulation firms contacted by the Weekend Herald last week all said they were busy. Two were planning to take on staff.

They were among the 33 approved providers of the government scheme. The authority is taking applications from others but a spokeswoman said it would be September before more may be approved.

Forget about who introduced the scheme, what we're talking about could be the law of unforseen consequences but in all likelihood is the result of someone not thinking or just not caring about all the likely consequences of introducing a new scheme. Like the person who decided a mixer had to be added to the out-pipe of hot water-cylinders to reduce the temperature without considering what this could do to the pressure at the tap/showerhead, this policy was obviously implemented without thinking about what people who were about to get insulation put in would do when they might suddenly get it a $grand cheaper by cancelling their order and waiting a month.

The scheme is a good idea, the implementation is a bit fail. Sure I wouldn't have thought of it but it's not my job to catch these things. I do kind of expect better from the experts who supposedly staff government departments.

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Also from the Herald, the possibilities inherent in adding technology to the national trucking fleet.

If there's a government fee regime that's ripe for an electronic makeover, it's the collection of road user charges from the national diesel truck fleet, totalling about $800 million a year.

The article mentions that persuading the industry establishment to implement the new technology is a major stumbling block. On that note ReadWriteWeb recently had an article about why the 'smart-grid', which could lead to an internet-like burst of innovation around electrical and other utility services, isn't going to be with us any time soon. The earth2tech article which inspired that post also has a bit of a follow up here.

She draws a comparison with real time GIS location data, which telecom companies initially objected was too expensive to deliver and not really needed by consumers. When the killer app of turn-by-turn driving directions was invented, that debate was put to rest and the real time geolocation data infrastructure was born.
...
What's the killer app for smart utility grids? Fehrenbacher says she doesn't know and that's the point - we can't even imagine what kinds of cool and useful applications will be developed on that platform once it's available. The lack of a killer app leads to less support for the building of the platform, though, a catch-22 we can relate to from discussions of our calls to open up aggregate activity data from social networks for analysis.

Fibre to or from the farm - there's another possible example from my special interests :D
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Finally, great little newspaper motto via Busytown - "If you don't want it printed, don't let it happen."