repton_infinity

If you like Portal (and who doesn't?), you must check out wecreatestuff's portal map pack: http://portalmaps.wecreatestuff.com/

It's based on their popular flash version of portal (which is also cool). Some of the levels are based on the flash levels they created. Some of them ... are not. All are excellent. This isn't just a pack of new puzzle maps; it's a new take on the original portal. More challenging, too, IMO — you need to be more aware, more dextrous.

Plus, there is cake!

http://www.vodafone.com/start/media_relations/news/group_press_releases/2007/vodafone_to_offer0.html

Vodafone today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in ten of its markets around the globe. Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network.

Hmm. Time for a new phone soon? :-)

Actually, the most interesting thing will be to see what kind of plans Vodafone offers with the iPhone. You can't buy an iPhone in the US without an unlimited traffic data plan, which is crucial because the iPhone is designed to be always online, checking email, and because Apple strongly present it as an internet device (email, web, maps, youtube, et cetera). Unlimited traffic plans don't exist in New Zealand, and most of Vodafone's traffic plans are very expensive. Hmm..

Remember _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_? Many consider it one of Heinlein's best works. It's really about Heinlein's libertarian beliefs — he paints a picture of a society free of public government, laws or taxes, where everything, even air, costs money, everyone is armed, and everything works.

But there had to be something going on in this setting for him to write about. That something is the moon's water crisis: the moon is a penal colony that mines ice, grows wheat underground (hydroponically, I guess), and ships it back to earth. The problem: this results in a large net export of water from the moon — mined as ice, trapped in the wheat, then dropped to earth. The lunar society is necessarily doomed unless they can stop this process.

Reading Frogblog today reminded me of this. Frog cites a Guardian article (apparently not online) talking about the world's water crisis. Apparently, Australia is one of the world's three biggest wheat suppliers (I guess that means it's #3). Until recently, it exported 70 cubic kilometres of water annually, primarily as food. What's the big story in the Australian environment now? You got it — drought.
(water exports are down because food exports are down, because they're running out of water. But I bet there's still a big outflow)

America has a similar problem. The Ogallala Aquifer supplies water to most of America's grain belt, and farmers are draining it much faster than it's being replenished.

The only good news is that the whole system — the earth — is not losing water. I guess that means unusual droughts are balanced by flooding in other parts of the world. Yay.

A stuff opinion piece on the use of the "f-word": http://www.stuff.co.nz/4482979a1861.html

In response, a commenter said:

i have to say that the word..f... is really rude . it show's no sign of respect to others. but in circumstances can be okay eg. when yo are having an argument with your othe half.. but defend what is right.

Well. That's cleared a lot of things up for me.

Well, I asked the council, and got back a detailed reply this afternoon.

In short: we don't/can't recycle batteries and things, so just chuck 'em in the bin. The council rep went on to say:

Wellington City Council operates a Class A landfill, which means that it must have a leachate collection system and there should not be any landfill discharges directly to land or freshwater. Our leachate gets tested for heavy metals and other hazardous chemicals and it consistently meets the acceptance criteria.

We acknowledge it would be best to minimise materials containing toxic substances, like batteries being landfilled and we are looking into options to prevent hazardous materials like fluorescent light bulbs, electronic waste and DC batteries being landfilled. However, this is really a national issue needing legislation that applies for the whole of New Zealand.

The Ministry for the Environment has indicated they are working on both voluntary and potentially mandatory national programmes to minimise certain materials from being landfilled. We advise you to contact the Ministry to find out what is being done regarding used batteries and compact fluorescent light bulbs on a national scale.

So, there you go.

What to do if your compact fluorescent breaks: open doors and windows, evacuate the room. Scoop the bits up without touching them and dispose of them in a sealed jar.

Anyone know how you're supposed to dispose of these things (when they burn out naturally) in NZ? I've never seen or heard any information on the topic.

(and the same goes for batteries, of which I have thrown away many: I guess my viewpoint on battery disposal has always been: "If it was a big deal, then people would be making a big deal of it, and I would know what to do. Since I don't, it isn't." But really, does anyone know?)

I have fond memories of reading Garfield when I was young. There was one book I particularly remember where the whole crew went to Hawaii, and some complicated plot ensued involving an erupting volcano and sacrificing someone to it. The details elude me. Not that you get anything so interesting these days — modern Garfield rarely has anything other than Jon and Garfield leaning on a surface. It's often good enough to elicit a weak smile, but rarely more than that.

In fact, Jim Davis apparently strives for this. I have read (possibly on Scott Adams' blog) that he set out to make a mediocre comic, because excellent comics attract controversy and haters. He allegedly spends much more time on merchandising and business than he does on creating the comic itself.

Is there hope for Garfield? Amazingly, it seems there is: all you have to do is take Garfield out.

http://gizmodo.com/368651/new-video-of-bigdog-quadruped-robot-is-so-stunning-its-spooky

The Japanese are obsessed with making human-like (particularly, female-human-like) robots, or robot pets, with carefully scripted responses. But they haven't yet managed to cross the uncanny valley. One of my ex-flatmates had a Roboraptor, which was effective at scaring cats, but little else. And I have great trouble imagining anyone bonding with an AIBO.

Of course, the real home of robotics these days is in factories and industry. Every so often, I will look at something I have bought and think, "This has probably been completely made and packaged by a robot. ...but how?" But for the most part, industrial robotics are out of sight and out of mind.

So Boston Dynamics' BigDog is the first robot I've seen to genuinely impress — nay, amaze — me. Check out the video. Most walking robots walk like a top-down design; like the algorithm designer is mapping the chaos of reality to a group of abstractions, and dealing with each abstraction in turn — hence they appear slow and awkward. Either that, or they use a tripod gait, which is absurdly stable. But the BigDog walks like it's alive. Two legs is certainly harder ... but looking at that video, I start to believe it's possible.

(they're designing BigDog as a pack mule for soldiers. Add in some basic speech recognition ("Come!" "Stay!" "Sit!") and I can totally see soldiers bonding with these things)

So, Livejournal no longer offers free accounts. You can get add-supported, or you can get premium. But the Basic account that I, and probably 90% of my friend list, have is no longer available.

Ok, those of us with free accounts get to keep them ... for now. But who knows what the future holds?

On defense:
1
2
3
4
5
6

(I didn't come near the disc, but the guy I was marking dropped it, so I claim partial credit)

Despite appearances, I did actually have a good time. Saturday was wet (increasingly-so as the day wore on), but calm (unusual for that tournament). We came fourth in the end — a slight disappointment, as I feel we could have done better. One of the players on the team was very skilled, but a great fan of flashy, low-percentage plays. Unfortunately, it's the boring, high-percentage play that wins games (and especially tournaments).

Oh well — I'll try again in November :-)

Ever wondered why wind turbines don't run in high winds?

Here's a video of a Danish turbine whose brakes failed in a storm.

Regarding the recent plane crash, from Stuff:

...neighbours, most of whom were elderly, helped by hosing down the fuel.

Is that smart? Anyone know?

Played: Half Life 2

A little while ago, I picked up _The Orange Box_, which is a compilation of Valve's new and recent games. The headline act was Portal, which I don't need to enthuse about since everyone else is doing plenty of that anyway :-)

But it also had _Half Life 2_, which I hadn't played before. HL2 was everyone's game of the year when it came out, and it's not hard to see why: it's very pretty, it's got interesting levels and a plot and good voice acting and a gravity gun and everything. But, in the end, I enjoyed it less than I thought I might.

The last first person games I played were _Deus Ex_ (several times) and _Thief 2_. For my money, HL2 loses to both these. In HL2, there's a plot, with scripted scenes and character interaction ... and yet you say nothing. People talk to you, and around you, and you just stand there like a deaf-mute. Even a FMV cutscene or two would have been better than this.

But I guess that's really just a symptom of the game's main flaw: it is entirely linear. There is exactly one path through the game, and at any point you have at most two options: go forward, or go back. If you're in a building, the stairways are all blocked and the doors are all locked, except for the one way forwards. If you're outside, the roads are blocked, the doors are shut, and you hunt around until you find the single ladder that you can climb to move on. The soldiers and things are all triggered to appear at certain points; you can't sneak up on them unless the True Path specifically lets you.

Compare with DX or T2, where there's always at least two ways in to any building, where you can watch the guards on their routine and sneak past them if you wish... well, it's neatly symbolic that HL2 — like the original _Half Life_ — starts on a train.

#4: When you don't get any exercise over Christmas, you lose weight.

(below 80kg for the first time in several years.. <sigh>)

I just had the geekiest dream ever. As follows:

Icehawk is reading from a book. ``This book has examples of code, some of them quite beautiful. For example, here's code from a tree lookup algorithm from Oracle. Reading it, you can see the designer's thought proecss: "If this happens, do this, if that happens, do that," and so on. And then right at the bottom, the final else statement kicks the whole procedure off again.''

Me [thinking]: So if the object searched for is not found, it will look forever.

I peer at the book. It shows there procedures.. in the dream, I could read their names, but I have forgotten, so I will call them A, B, C. A did some stuff, then finished with "call B". B did some stuff, then finished with "call C". C was the workhorse procedure; it did lots of stuff, and finished with "else: call A".

Icehawk continues reading: ``Problem: given these procedures, derive an approximation of π.''

Me: ``Is there any output? I mean, π pops up in some recurrence relations, but ...''

Icehawk: ``N..o..o..o...''

Me [waking]: OMG, this is a geeky dream. I must post it to livejournal immediately!

The doctor said it's healing nicely, then discharged me. I tried walking back from the hospital, but my lower calf gave out after a few blocks so I had to take a bus.

Tomorrow I will cycle to the gym — the doctor cleared me for loaded exercises, though I'm a bit hesitant so I won't push things.

So, I was thinking to myself: I signed up for Kiwisaver. How do I track how much I've saved?

Poking around, I eventually found a "Manage my Kiwisaver" link which I could sign up for. First thing I need is an account with IR.

"Please enter your IRD number" the form said to me. "By entering your number you assert that it is your number.". Uhuh. Good thing bad guys never lie about these things.

Next, I get to a form. It looks like the usual web signup form: name, email, phone. "Choose a username", it says. "Your username must start with two alphabetical characters, be between 5 and 10 characters long, and contain a mixture of letters and numbers." I entered "Repton". The next page's still loading (in the time it's taken me to compose this post), so we'll see if it complains that my username isn't secure enough.

Finally, I need to enter a "Verification phrase" for password recovery. It's like those "Answer a question" things ... except without the question. In other words, it's basically another password, but you never use it so you're more likely to forget it. Oh, and it must be at most 32 characters long.

I thought it would be nice to use it as a portable document viewer. So I scp'd mhy copy of the d20srd over. But it turns out that safari can't open local files fortunately the Internet suggested a solution: I could install Apache, put the files I'm the appropriate place, and point safari at localhost. Unfortunately it turns out that the appache documents for is on a different, much smaller volume so I moved the files back. And put a symlink in the appropriate place.

I understand it also plays music.

More spam:

pooch audition yet mccarthy pooch
perle chromosome widthwise deepen prurient reveal comatose atrophy mccarthy
audition leek
reveal shasta pencil contravariant blab
chimpanzee
churchmen deepen doodle bashaw perle

mccarthy doodle audition chimpanzee churchmen chromosome drury tonsillitis atrophy gypsum leek
mccarthy audition sandstone doodle end chimpanzee falsify
widthwise contravariant pencil banana stimuli precede audition churchmen chimpanzee audition pencil
stimuli chimpanzee miscreant tonsillitis miscreant

This kind of spam is great at getting past spam filters, obviously. OTOH, it obviously doesn't mean anything. So what's the point?

I can think of three possibilities:

1. New spammer: a new spammer has just bought spam software and time on a botnet and he's still figuring out how his/her software works.
2. Address cleaning: spammer wants to remove dead addresses, but not remove live addresses protected by agressive spam filters.
3. Filter poisoning: by encouraging people to flag this kind of thing as spam, the spammer is hoping to increase the false-positive rate of spam filters, forcing people to turn them down (or off).

Thoughts?

Y'know, it used to be that stock photos of a "computer" (as oppposed to a particular type of computer) were almost always Macs. I always figured that was because professional photographers are commonly Mac users, but maybe it's also because Macs have clean lines and minimal branding on the front (as opposed to a typically-more-cluttered PC laptop).

But maybe things are changing: the "Your say" section of Stuff.co.nz is currently sporting an ASUS EeePC...