The plan is that this will be my semi-professional site – eventually including a service where prints of selected photographs can be ordered from (I found a pretty good service that has a well-recommended API – but more on that later).

This also means that I’ll be starting to think about rebuilding Horus Kol to be a dedicated blog (in Drupal), and probably remove most of the galleries. That probably won’t happen until sometime over next month or so – as I’ll still be adding features and content to Modus InOperandi.

In the meantime – enjoy the photographs over on the new site. There are some old and some new ones there – including fireworks shots taking on New Year’s thanks to my new remote-shutter-release for the SLR.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has
been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his
birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

- Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
- Why the early bird gets the worm;
- Life isn’t always fair;
- and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more
than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in
charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but
overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy
charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate, teens suspended from
school for using mouthwash after lunch, and a teacher fired for reprimanding
an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job
that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.
It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent
to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student, but could not inform
parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses, and
criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a
beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home
and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to
realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her
lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement. Common Sense was preceded
in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his
daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers: I Know My Rights; I Want It Now;
Someone Else Is To Blame; and I’m A Victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you
still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

Ben Goldacre writes an incredibly intelligent and accessible deconstruction of homeopathy, nutrionism, and big pharma, and how they all abuse science and play on people’s hopes and fears with only one real goal – money.

Goldacre doesn’t actually cover the money angle too much, though, as that is incidental to the more insidious aspects of this ‘bad science’. The twisting of facts, hiding of methods, and bald-faced lying in reporting is making people distrustful of any science, and is ultimately causing deaths (I read with open-mouthed amazement at the stupidity of the South African authorities who listened to nutrionists advocating vitamin C instead of the anti-retro virals backed up by large-scale trial-based evidence).

Ultimately, Goldacre’s goal is make the general public aware of how science should be conducted, and how scientific evidence should be presented – and if methods are hidden, or references obscured, then this should all be a big red flag to warn you off.

Its a shame, then, that this book will likely be dismissed by that same general public as they want to believe in the miracle pill that will never come.

Original Review: http://www.librarything.com/work/5024010/reviews/51235639

Ben Goldacre also writes a column for the Guardian, covering these kinds of topics. The columns and discussions on them are available at http://www.badscience.net/

The world, or at least our understanding of it, was very different 150 years, and many great minds were working towards finding the answers to the many questions that surrounded them. Darwin wrote this book after many years of observing the world, and also discussing and learning the observations of many of his contemporaries.

Despite the books ‘changed the world’ status – much of what Darwin writes was not new in 1859, although all of the ideas about evolution and variation had probably never been collected into as comprehensive a theory.

One thing that I had to keep reminding myself was that the book was written 150 years, and that much more scientific investigation in to the subject has been conducted which has shaped the Theory of Evolution into its current form. This was most prevalent whenever Darwin discussed the cause and effect of variation (and why a variation might continue through multiple generations) – although it is understandable that this should be an unknown for Darwin since the science of genetics was to take a few decades to come about, and then the actual mechanism (DNA) wouldn’t be understood until well over a century after he wrote his book.

The Origin of Species is an excellent start for people interested in biology and searching for answers as to why life on the planet is the way it is. But it does need to be followed up with reading on the vast amount of work that has taken place over the intervening 150 years.

So, if the West is producing so much food, why are people going without?

The common answer is distribution – the food is being produced in the wrong place. But it isn’t just a simple case of loading up the ships and trucks with grain and transporting it to where people are hungry. For one thing, the costs of transporting the food will typically be added to the point of consumption, and given the incredibly low income in the most hunger-stricken areas, they couldn’t afford it. Also, there is a problem of infrastructure – shipping grain is great, but there is no industry in these areas which can adequately process it all into actual foodstuffs – and the people are stuck having to spend most of their time gathering and preparing their food and so are stuck living a subsistence-only lifestyle (something that hardly anyone of my age in Australia or the UK or the US has to do these days).

So, what is the answer. Help people grow enough food locally to support a community, and then help the community develop away from subsistence to productive existence.

In the 1960s and 70s, India underwent a large-scale Green Revolution – and began producing enough food to support a move from an agrarian society to a strong technological and industrial power. However, this came at a cost as the intensive use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers have had ongoing effects on the health of the population and the environment of the country.

National Geographic looked at a number of similar projects being undertaken in sub-Saharan Africa, some that appear doomed to make the same mistakes as were made in India, but others that are looking for better methods. Soil, Foods and Healthy Communities is one such group in Malawi, and while they started relatively small a few years ago, they are slowly expanding their methods and producing new methods and techniques.

Mostly, SFHC is helping famers in northern Malawi to improve the quality of their land using natural methods like the burial of crop residues (once the food is gathered, there is a bunch of leftover vegetation that can be used to regenerate the soil), and by using ‘intercropping’ (growing beans and grain together in the same field).

SFHC’s approach is working, and life is improving for the local community around the farms where SFHC are involved, but they need more support to keep expanding their coverage.

I hope that they can continue their work – and that Western farming can learn from their lessons.

When I checked the incoming messages, I was informed out that Nintendo have decided to release their Internet Channel for free.

Channels are basically software applications which are installed on the Wii’s hard disc. Some provide access to game data without needing to load the game, while others, like the Internet and Photo Channels offer specific enhancements to the Wii experience.

The Internet Channel is not lightweight – it occupies about 10% of the available storage on the console, probably due to the installation of Adobe’s FlashPlayer. Still, I figured I’d give it a go.

I’d never downloaded anything from the Wii Shop before – next time I’ll be sure to mute the television when I do, since the progress bar involves Mario running and killing a bunch of Goomba’s with a very annoying repeated ‘bling’ everytime he gets one. Thankfully, it didn’t take too long.

Sound is also an issue when using the browser in the channel – there are clicks and twurps as you wave the wand around the page to hover over links and also when scrolling and zooming.

I was surprised to find that the browser was built on top of Opera (I guess, with their relative success on mobile platforms it did make sense for them to be approached for a console browser) – although the only reason you’d know is the badge when you first start and the big ‘O’ on the home button. The rest of the design fits the typical aerogel of the Wii interface.

Web pages load pretty quick, although some elements seemed to take longer to render (for example, the banner up the top). I also didn’t notice any major issues with CSS/HTML breaking. Text is a bit hard to read on my screen, but I have a 15 year old 24″ CRT. However, since the Wii doesn’t have a HD output, standard browsing will likely be problematic on any screen. You can zoom in and the text becomes legible – but this then incurs horizontal scrolling on most sites.

You only have a choice of Google or Yahoo as your in-browser search, but you can use any other search engine as a web page.

Visiting YouTube redirects to the YouTube XL platform, designed for consoles. Image quality is pretty good (the videos I watched were at minimum the same quality as the television itself), but the platform skips frames as a bandwidth saving measure. I have to admit, though, that the movies didn’t pause while the cache was topped up.

For a free browser you can use on your television, I think that this is pretty good. I wouldn’t have downloaded it when it cost 500 points, though (I’m not entirely sure on the dollar to point ratio at the moment, but I think that is about $5-10).

There are a couple of issues – the aforementioned navigation sounds as you use it are a bit annoying. Also, there doesn’t seem to be any parental control for the channel at all – meaning any family member could access any content (not a problem for me – but seeing as I know a number of families with young children and a household Wii, it isn’t ideal for them).

Still – if you have a Wii, and don’t mind it eating 10% of the storage, give it a try. At the least, you can remove and have not lost anything but a little bit of bandwidth for the download.

The font is not intended as a final print font for design or reports, rather the designers intend it to be used for draft-type printing and for general everyday printing (emails, memos, etc).

But this is rather limited as an effective means of saving resources. For one thing, the document being printed must be written using this font, and since a lot of documentation is typically written outside of an organisation (emails, etc), then this is outside the control of the person printing unless they edit the document to use the new font, which incurs a time cost. There are also many times when changing the font from the original to ecofont just aren’t appropriate – for example, it wouldn’t make sense to replace a specific font in a draft design.

A much better option is to set your printer defaults to draft printing, and only ever use full printing for final print jobs. That way, you get much greater reductions in ink usage regardless of what font you are using, and even when you are printing graphics and images.

The game is Osmos, and is produced by Hemisphere Games, one of many small independents who are able to market their games through the Steam content delivery system and bypass the usual publishers and problems therein.

The game itself is quite simple – you are a blob (or an amoeba or somesuch), and you jet around by ejecting some of your mass in the opposite direction in which you want to travel (this can also come in handy in order to move other blobs as conservation of momentum is maintained in collisions as well).

Your basic goal is to feed on smaller blobs, and to not be eaten by bigger blobs. There are a variety of other blobs out there, although the game isn’t quite sadistic enough to throw all varieties at you at once. The game ramps up pretty quickly from the introductory levels, and leaves you with some incredibly difficult and frustrating levels towards the end.

The most amazing thing about this game is the realisation that it is a physics game – as well as the conservation of momentum, there are other blobs that ‘attract’, and these levels start you with enough motion to be in orbit. One of the most beautiful levels is the one where a number of attractors are orbiting another central attractor, and you are orbiting one these satellites. The difficulty comes when you have to carefully manoeuvre your blob into another attractors orbit without crashing into the edge of the level or any of the attractors.

Smartly, the game doesn’t limit the number of attempts you have on any level, and so you can keep trying until you can beat the level (or give up in exasperation after spending an hour or more). You also have the option to randomise the distribution of blobs, although this doesn’t apply on certain ‘crafted’ levels.

The graphics are simple, but elegantly so, and visual cues help identify when another blob is safe to approach or not. You also have control of ‘time’ in the game, so you can slow everything down to give yourself more reaction time, or you can speed up through any boring bits and cut down on waiting. The game also has a lot of ambient music – which helps to keep you calm while you start swearing at yet another seemingly impossible (and eventually winnable) level.

Good game, and not bad for the price, although I think it would sell more at $5.

And then, its hard to start something and stop, then to try and pick it up again the next night – so much time is lost in trying to remember where I was up to. The result is that I end up staying up later than I should (and then getting less sleep than I need), and then by the weekend I’m not interested in doing anything except be lazy.

So, now, I’m going to try a new plan. In the week I’ll try and relax in the evenings, and limit the time I spend ‘working’ to about a 30-45 minute task. Then I should be good to spend several hours on Saturday and Sunday to do the bigger things.

One step is to work smarter, and not harder. For example, I find writing is easier if I am doing it in a long session, and so instead of trying to write a blog post two or three evenings a week, I’ll write in long session at the weekend (today, I’ve spent about 2 hours on it) and queue up the posts (I got this idea from my friend John of SixLabRats). That is opposed to the hour or so I’d have spent on each blog post on a weekday evening because of trying to gear up and focus after spending a day at the office (invariably tired because I had been up late the night before trying to get something else done again).

If the experiment is successful, then you should see more content here and at RandomTweak, as well as a new theme at RT next week, and hopefully the Drupal‘d version of HK a couple of weeks after that (with content).

If you want to fly in this war, you must be crazy. If you’re crazy, then we won’t let you fly – but if you don’t want to fly, then that is rational fear of death, so you can’t be crazy which means you have to fly.

- Catch-22

Catch-22 follows a group of young men conscripted into service and flying bombing missions in Italy as part of a fictional squadron in the United States Army Air Force. It centres around Yossarian, a bombardier (bomb-aimer) who is reluctant to continue flying as friends and other squadron members are swatted down by anti-aircraft fire, or other mishaps, but has to keep flying as long he is demonstrating this reluctance (since this is a sane reaction to the evident danger of flying missions).

The book seems to draw on real tales and experiences from the war – although they are obviously fictionalised and further enhanced by Heller’s satire.

There are some incredible sequences in the book – including Milo Minderbender’s amazing ability to get eggs in Malta at 7 cents a piece, and then sell them on for a profit at 5 cents a piece. And then there is the hunt for Washington Irving, a false identity used by a number of officers in the squadron, much to the vexation of military intelligence, and Major Major’s biography and rise to squadron commander, and more and more.

The storyline is a little scattergun in places – talking about events and jumping about the timeline in order to provide more details a little later on in the book, but it is extremely easygoing to read, and even the crazy skews of logic that some of the characters take are fun to follow and reach the conclusion.

One thing I find remarkable is that the book was written before the Vietnam War had even started, and even more years before the mass disaffection with conscription that started the protests and demonstrations of the late 60s and early 70s (although the film adaptation did hit the screens in 1970 alongside M*A*S*H). But, then, the book isn’t really anti-war as much as it is a commentary on exactly how crazy can be.