Easy Eikaiwa

To the 130 or so individuals who showed an interest in Easy Eikaiwa by taking the time to open an account I'd like to say thank you.

We've been back in Australia for nearly two years now and have moved on to other things, but Easy Eikaiwa is still ticking along, signing up the occasional free account every now and then. If anyone is actually using it I'd love to hear from you! Otherwise as we're paying ongoing hosting costs to keep the site operational it might be time to call it a day and close the site down.

My time working in Japan developing a scheduling system was a great experience. The vision for Easy Eikaiwa was to create a simple and affordable system for english schools to manage their scheduling online instead of using Excel spreadsheets via phone, fax, email, etc. as many schools do.

Let me know if anyone would like to keep the site up.

Cheers,

Mark Beattie

http://maninjapan.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/beet

Has it been 5 years already?

Was just taking the A List Apart 2008 survey when I came up to a question asking how long you've had a personal blog for. Turns out 5 days ago was the 5th anniversary of this very blog! What are the chances of that?

I'd never have known otherwise. Looking back, it seems I've made just shy of 150 posts over the last 5 years, averaging at something like 1 post every couple of weeks. I know there are no regular readers, but I still like to get stuff off my mind that I feel like addressing to the world in general on the off chance that someone might stumble across it.

More recently, Twitter has filled a niche for broadcasting random thoughts and musings: http://twitter.com/beet.

Should spend more time doing stuff worth writing about.

Come and feel the noise

Normally I quite like the Ebay layout, it's clean and intuitive, and their algorithms for recommending content and keeping recently viewed items in view are very good. Then I got a reply to a question I had asked a seller...

Try and spot the reply amongst the interface background noise:



After several painful seconds scanning around the page aimlessly I finally focussed in and found it:



Absolutely shocking! The very part of the page the viewer is most interested in has the least focus, a clear case of mistaken priorities.

(Yes, I have been browsing V1 iPhones...)

Telstra - coming into the 21st century kicking & screaming

This whole iPhone thing has been very depressing, with Australian telcos basically trying to rape consumers up the ass for exorbitant data fees. Telstras plans being the worst offender of all, averaging at $1/MB.

It got me to thinking, forward-looking telcos like the unfortunately named 3 Mobile have come to terms with the fact that their role in the new communications landscape will essentially be as an ISP, and are embracing it with data plans at a mere 10c/MB.

Telstra must be afraid of being relagated yet again to being "dumb-pipes" for mobile data, and are reluctantly being dragged into it kicking and screaming the whole way. It's clear they fear that offering affordable data rates would inevitably eat into their voice profits when VoIP becomes more ubiquitous on mobile handsets.

3 Mobile on the other have been offering Skype phones for quite some time now. Interesting that they are one of the Australian providers not granted an iPhone dealership...

Australian tiered iPhone plans

Well done Vodafone and Optus on publishing your iPhone pricing plans. (Vodafone prices, Optus prices). Telstra: what are you hiding? Seriously, it can't be much worse.

For a poultry 1GB/month of 3G data, they both want about $AU170. A month. Every month. For several years. That's only the best part of four thousand dollars, just for the data! For fuck's sake!!!

Should someone maybe tell them that it has WiFi as well? You know, it's that thing where you can connect directly to a wireless internet router without using the phone's 3G packet data.

So predictably short-sighted and lame. Much like tiered broadband with "peak" and "off-peak" data allowances, ways and means of accessing data will be found at the minimum cost and inconvenience to the consumer - be it automatic throttling of our bit torrent clients to stay within our "broadband" data allowance, or simply using the increasingly ubiquitous WiFi hotspots in city centres and staying on the bottom tier iPhone pricing plan.

Word of mouth marketing

Came across a free PDF for The Word of Mouth Manual Volume II via Guy Kawasaki's interview with the author, and it's just brilliant.

"the recommendation of a friend, family member, acquaintance—or even a stranger—is a primary driver of most purchase decisions"

As I read that I remembered going into the beer fridge of a bottle shop on the weekend to pick up a case of James Squire amber ale. I'd tried a six-pack the weekend before and loved it enough to happily invest the $50 in a case this time around.

I was with my son actually, and as we went in there was another father and son about the same age browsing the selection. Maybe he noticed me beeline the amber ale, but for whatever reason he said he'd been thinking about trying it and asked me what it is like, what other beer you might compare it to.

As we left with our purchase I looked back to see him proceeding to the counter with a six pack himself. My guess is that if his tastes are anything like mine he'll be back for a case next weekend too.

Believers as a percentage of global population 2002

From http://www.rayfowler.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/map_world_religions.gif

19.8% - Muslims
17.4% - Roman Catholics
15.5% - Other Christians, Protestants, Orthodox Christians
14.9% - Agnostics, Atheists
13.3% - Hindus
13.0% - Other...
5.9% - Buddhists
0.2% - Jews

Six years ago, nearly one third of the world's population weren't sure, believed something else, or believed in the non-existance of any divine entities.

Tibetan Buddhism stresses the importance of empathy and compassion regardless of religious belief.

There's hope for us yet. For as long as we can maintain separation of church and state anyway.

iTunes - I want to love you, but you make it so hard!

Here I am listening to Groove Salad when a song comes on, Universal Traveller, that I remember wanting to add to my playlist. Legally. No, seriously.

So I hit up the iTunes store, find the album, and click buy. Reset my password (again), and verify PayPal as my payment method. Go back to iTunes, hit the buy button again, and am rewarded with this:



It says:

"This recipient requires that you have a valid funding source from the United States in order to complete this transaction."

WTF? They're a French band! Seriously, I'm so tired of trying to buy media legally and having it thrown back in my face, just to hear the recording industry crying about file sharing eating into their business.

Money created from debit - oil prices continue to soar

Just saw an article about Spanish hauliers on fuel strike where it says:

"The Spanish government says it is preparing a package of measures to assist the transport sector.

These measures include emergency loans, more flexible contracts and cash payments to older lorry drivers who are willing to retire."

The fractional reserve banking system just found more fuel for the fire:

In short, there are two types of money in a fractional-reserve banking system:

1. central bank money (physical currency such as coins and paper money)


2. commercial bank money (money created through loans) - sometimes referred to as checkbook money

Expect prices to get higher

Aussie taxi drivers

Some quotes I found interesting from a recent Triple J TV interview with some local taxi drivers:

"The worst passengers are people affected by alcohol. Like this clown here getting out of a cab in the middle of the road. I mean, he wouldn't do that nine to five. I'd much rather carry a junkie. People on drugs don't want any trouble. They just want to sit down, shut up, and get where they're going. They don't want to end up in the police station."

"I've had people shooting up in the car, that's a bit scary. I worry if they're going to drop off the perch. I just tried to make light of it pretty much, make a joke out of it and say "you watch yourself there". They're just trying to do their thing as I'm trying to do mine. As long as we don't come to grief over it, it's all good."

storage of information

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA

The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information

Some random (semi)inebriated thoughts on the flow of information and the futility of continued attempts to profit from it:

• Information subverts control


• Information subverts hierarchy


• There seems to be a relation between the increase in entropy and information - the less able our universe is to to do work, the more we seem to know about it


• We are ourselves products of the free exchange of the information stored in our DNA - limiting this flow of information, for example through in-breeding, has detrimental effects such as a higher frequency of recessive, deleterious traits


• Attempts to stem the flow of information for any reason are probably an anomaly


• This tends to suggest that ultimately all information should be shared, freely


• Secrecy and privacy are an illusion


• Information is not owned, it is only exchanged.


• Gatekeepers of information hold a precarious position - information by it's own nature strives to be shared by all


• secrets are just information that is temporarily shielded from de-centralised systems of information exchange


• Profiting from restricting the flow of information through controlled pipelines is temporary


• Sharing information freely is priceless


• Enabling individuals to exchange information freely should be more valuable than attempting to restrict it's flow to those who pay to access it (such restrictions can only ever be temporary)

Girls claim to want a guy with a good sense of humour...

...but always go home with his better looking mate.

This photo of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac,



reminded me of this billboard poster:



(sorry about the crappy photo, my camera phone sucks)

My sense of humour is often remarked upon. Admit it, which guy are you?

OmniFocus sync to a generic WebDAV server

This in from Ethan Schoonover of The Omni Group:

Just wanted to note that we've built OmniFocus sync so that you can use either an existing .Mac membership or a generic WebDAV server (often much cheaper than a full .Mac membership). We've also added the ability to sync via a disk so you could also use a USB thumb drive, for example.

Yay! Now that's what I'm talking about.

Genetically pre-disposed to be susceptible to advertising

Testicles are proof! From http://www.nyu.edu/classes/neimark/evolution.html

...in any encounter in animals where advertisement is important--and that's very, very often--an advertisement is only believed if it's validated by being costly.

Translated into English, what the male is saying is, `Look how powerful a male I am, because I can afford to wear my balls outside my body, in the most vulnerable position. You'd better not mess with me because I am proving my strength and my ability as a fighter.'

Photo by 512 Photography - CC Attribution

BitTorrent for legitimate file distribution

Over 1MB/sec, with zero load on the software vendor's servers.

Cloud Computing

Was just thinking about how much I love cloud computing, and how some people are still opposed to the idea.

The advantages as I see it are not having to store countless GB of data on your own computer, and being able to access your data anywhere. Not to mention leveraging the huge computing grids it's hosted on to perform CPU intensive operations like searching your data.

The disadvantages I think are moot, namely that an active internet connection is required to access your data. To draw an analogy, I think it would have been like arguing against the introduction of the motor car by saying they're only useful wherever there are paved roads.

Internet access will become ubiquitous. The limiting factor is bandwidth. Using the motor car analogy again it's like the number of lanes limits the traffic bearing capacity. It will be a long time before we can store our entire digital libraries online, but for now I'm happy keeping my media locally, and my email, RSS feeds, notes, and bookmarks online.

OmniFocus gets sync... soon

From http://blog.omnigroup.com/2008/05/09/omnifocus-sync-its-alive/

Sounds like sync is already in the internal test versions of OmniFocus. I had tried messing around with Automator scripts and rsync to no avail. The first out of Omnifocus and Things to get full synchronization will be the one I'll start using again at work. It will most likely depend on .Mac membership which I'm disinclined to pay the $130 or so per year for.

Perspectives: contexts vs tags

I had recently switched from OmniFocus to Things for a trial comparison of the 2 main GTD apps for Mac. I have a purchased copy of OmniFocus, but was finding it a little frustrating trying to track multiple home & work related projects, and using it as a system you can trust to store ideas and someday/maybe tasks using only a single context to identify each task.

After using Things for a few weeks now it feels like a breath of fresh air. It's tagging system is very simple, but incredibly powerful. I love being able to process my tasks and quickly move a bunch to the Today focus, and then using the tag filter further refine my next actions down to either general work/home related tasks, or a specific context.

It also has a strong someday/maybe and scheduled concept. Tasks in the Someday focus don't vanish completely, but appear in a collapsed section beneath your active tasks. Scheduled tasks automatically move into the Today focus on their scheduled date.

I'm also loving the Projects and Areas features. Projects can have tags which automatically apply to any tasks added to them, but can also be assigned to an area such as Work or Home. For me it's more in keeping with the GTD definition of a project being any action that requires more than one step to complete. OmniFocus on the other hand left a lingering feeling of hierarchical structure makes tasks less accessible.

Anyway, there's a perspectives screencasts video for OmniFocus out that made me think how much it points out the difficulty in accessing tasks in Omnifocus.

Pictures in books

I can't remember how the conversation started. We were driving home from spending the day dressed as Ninjas, I think the place was called Iga-shi but I'm also equally suspicious of being completely wrong about that. At some point though, he asked "don't you believe in god?"

Misaki and I exchanged glances. I employed an extreme amount of mental effort to carefully time and calculate my responses, a rare occurrence for once as myself who usually lacks so much as an inner monologue. I said "Why, do you?". The exact words of our exchange have lost me, but it was something along these lines. "Yes, of course", he said. "Why?". "Because I've seen pictures in books". An interesting response for a six year-old who has never been to church, seen a bible, or been to scripture class. At least not in my presence...

"Grandma and Grandpa told me about Jesus, and God. They had a book with pictures". Another calculated pause... "Can you remember any of the pictures?" He couldn't. When asked if he believed them, he said he loves learning because it makes him smarter. Not what I asked, but an excellent answer. He instinctively trusts knowledge passed on to him from people he trusts and admires.

"Don't you believe in god?". What could I say, isn't it about ten years too soon for this conversation? "Which one?" I reply. Learning what I believe is of less importance than discovering the ability to discern right from wrong independently. The concept of multiple gods was new and intriguing... you mean there's more than one?

It depends who you ask, I explain. There are many people in the world, some people believe in Jesus, some in Muhammad, some follow the teachings of Buddha, while many once worshipped Amon-ra. Most of them believe that their beliefs are right however, while everyone else's are wrong. "I just go one step further - maybe we're all wrong. The important thing to remember is: don't believe everything you read in books".

I don't want to influence my son's religious views one way or another. Actually, that's not true, I do truly want to protect him from being blinded, but I have to trust that he'll open his own eyes in time and see, see whatever he chooses to see. I hope he never looses his child-like sense of wonder though, his empathy and compassion for all living things, and his joy and humor. If he has to learn from pictures in books, may they be photos that are true to life without any bias or opinion, that invite him to explore and discover for himself.

I don't fear answers, only that we forget to ask the right questions.

love, peace

East of Everything

It's rare that I switch our large LCD TV over to the digital tuner and actually watch terrestrial broadcasts, as opposed to watching DVDs or browsing the web with our Wii, but a couple of weeks ago I did. On such rare occasions I'll gravitate straight to the ABC or SBS, emulating the way your eyes are drawn the the center, advertisement-free section of a web page to avoid the banner ads while it loads. I don't even see them anymore, just like the commercial channels 7, 9, and 10 don't exist in my world.

The reward this time was a new show on ABC called East of Everything. Set in Broken Bay, it follows the stories of two brothers acting as the executors of their recently deceased mother's estate, once a tropical resort which has since degenerated into disuse. It really strikes a chord with me somehow, and I'm really enjoying it.

A couple of quotes:

East of Everything reminds us that whatever our past, for most people there is the opportunity to recognise something good in it, which we can take and move on

It's a show about characters in large spaces. People are trapped by circumstance rather than geography.

Ultimately, we wanted to create a series that was very hopeful, which recognises that there is a melancholy sadness about life, but there is also a fantastic joy.

The last quote means the most to me. Fortunately, it's available as a podcast which suits my viewing habbits.