Valhalla Island

Living out of the Moment

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 18:39:09 +1000

Living out of the Moment:

My ongoing crusade.

The Philips S10

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:56:00 +1000

The Philips S10:

Copying Apple even when it makes no sense at all.

TextMate 2

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:28:02 +1000

TextMate 2:

After all this time I feel more positive about TextMate’s future than ever.

Medium and Other Similar Startups

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 12:36:00 +1000

Medium and Other Similar Startups:

A bit of a rant about the recent crop of startups like Medium which solve such non-existant problems that the creators can’t even describe the thing.

Being Realistic About Email

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:05:25 +1000

Being Realistic About Email:

My response to Matt Gemmell’s unrealistic post on Managing Email Realistically.

The Cloud

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 20:59:19 +1000

The Cloud:

I hate the word.

App.net or Twitter with a Better Business Model

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 22:20:19 +1000

App.net or Twitter with a Better Business Model:

Silly opaque name, gimmicky Kickstarter-like fundraising but still interesting.

A Better iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac Home Stereo

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 12:25:00 +1000

A Better iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac Home Stereo:

Speaker docks for iPhones, iPods and iPads are expensive, ugly or offer plain terrible sound quality. Often they’re all three yet they’re popular. Your iOS device is a great interface for browsing and selecting music having to dock it significantly diminishes that experience.

This is a much better setup.

Some Minor Differences Between France and Australia

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 06:49:20 +1000

Some Minor Differences Between France and Australia:

As observed during my month long stay in Grenoble.

Valhalla Island

Mon, 28 May 2012 08:29:07 +1000

Valhalla Island:

A reminder that Valhalla Island is no longer on Tumblr. The new location has a Twitter account and an RSS feed for you to easily subscribe to updates.

Moving Away From Tumblr

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:40:00 +1000

Moving Away From Tumblr:

The transition to Octopress is complete and it could not have gone more smoothly. Just a couple of days after I complained about Tumblr’s direction and as I was configuring my blog’s new home, this starts getting promoted on the Dashboard sidebar. Confirmation that I’ve made the right decision.

Regular programming will continue at the new location.

Photo replies, ask, fan mail and now highlighted posts. I mean, just look at this shit. The core of...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:33:00 +1000

Photo replies, ask, fan mail and now highlighted posts. I mean, just look at this shit. The core of Tumblr has remained the same but the steady addition of gratuitous features pandering to the teenage masses participating in an online popularity contest has put me off. It was a refreshing switch from WordPress, a good 590 posts and a couple of years but Tumblr is going in a direction that is not for me.

When I get a chance I’ll be moving Valhalla Island to Octopress or a custom system similar to Brent’s. Hopefully this tool will help me smoothly transition the archive.

With Apple’s focus on the stuff that matters it’s...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:56:00 +1000

With Apple’s focus on the stuff that matters it’s surprising to see the very old link pointer cursor change in Mac OS 10.7.3. Stranger still considering the direction towards touch interfaces.

Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, is disgustingly obese proof that money can’t...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:51:00 +1000

Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, is disgustingly obese proof that money can’t buy beauty. External or otherwise. It boggles my mind and sickens me to think that someone with such vast financial wealth made from literally plundering the land would be so anti-tax.

The Dumbest Idea in the World

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:14:00 +1000

Maximising shareholder value that is. Roger Martin in his book Fixing the Game:

Imagine an NFL coach holding a press conference on Wednesday to announce that he predicts a win by 9 points on Sunday, and that bettors should recognize that the current spread of 6 points is too low. Or picture the team’s quarterback standing up in the postgame press conference and apologizing for having only won by 3 points when the final betting spread was 9 points in his team’s favor. While it’s laughable to imagine coaches or quarterbacks doing so, CEOs are expected to do both of these things.

[…]

If this were the situation in the NFL, then everyone would realize that the “real game” of football had become utterly corrupted by the “expectations game” of gambling.

This is why I’d be bothered about Facebook’s IPO if I had an account there, the focus will be moved from what’s best for you as a customer to what’s best for the shareholder. I don’t even know why Facebook would want to do it, they had $3.5 billion of revenue last year, they don’t need the money and they’d lose control.

Tesla Model S

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:12:00 +1000

Tesla Model S:

I’m definitely not a car person. I’ll go as far to say that cars are inherently flawed and even fuelled by 100% clean energy their prevalence has many negative consequences. But I digress, I wanted to write about the couple of things Tesla did right.

It looks like a regular car. Not that the Prius is a great example of an electric car but I think they really fucked up by making it look so unlike “normal” cars. And not that I think regular cars look or function that well. I think not freaking people out with radically ugly electric cars is a good step towards adoption.
The mileage the 85 kWh battery gets (480km) makes the car usable in the only scenario where cars are truly appropriate: travelling as efficiently as possible to remote places.
They made it regular sized. It can even carry 7 people with a special seat configuration. Like I said a couple of days ago, a tiny car with low range that just carries one person is barely better than walking.
It uses a regular power outlet with the option for a higher powered specialty charger. The Leaf requires a special thing installed by an electrician in your garage making impromptu charges impossible.

I think they’ve done a lot of things right to get it widely adopted.

But I think they’ve gone wrong with the ridiculous number of options. There’s 54 possible combinations of model, wheel and roof. Those are only three of many other decisions you have to make. The possible combinations go into the thousands. $250 for an optional parcel shelf!? Just decide for me whether it’s a good idea, if it is, put it in and charge me for it.

The same goes for the battery capacities. It’s obviously the most expensive thing about the car so removing capacity reduces the cost making it more accessible but it also removes the number one advantage: long range.

While companies like Qantas are willing to screw customers and lose millions of dollars as a tool to...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:36:00 +1000

While companies like Qantas are willing to screw customers and lose millions of dollars as a tool to not pay their employees what they’re worth, Ken Grenda hands out millions of dollars worth of bonuses to his loyal staff.

One bus driver, John, says Ken Grenda has been a great man to work for.

“He is a generous person and a true gentleman,” he told ABC local radio.

The definition of doing things right.

Thousands of parents illegally homeschooling: At a get-together of home schoolers in a suburban...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 05:50:03 +1000

Thousands of parents illegally homeschooling:

At a get-together of home schoolers in a suburban park in Brisbane, one mother, Cindy, said she was about to start home schooling her son but was afraid of the paperwork involved.

“I’m not planning (on registering) because of the work involved,” she said.

“I’m not very organised and disciplined in that sense so that would be a big thing for me to undertake.”

Wow.

Not The Solution

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:49:00 +1000

The Segway didn’t spawn a transportation revolution because what it’s trying to replace is walking, the simplest, cheapest, most convenient and most environmentally friendly transport there is. Walking is the preference. If it can be walked people want to walk it.

The same goes for these kinds of tiny electric cars unveiled every six months or so and sold as the “answer to urban stress and pollution”.

A better (i.e. smaller, electricity powered) car is not the solution to transportation and social problems in urban centres which have been designed around the car but don’t need them.

These cars barely carry two people, never luggage and they only have a range of around 100km (which actually means a range of 50km if you want to get home). There’s much better ways to transport a single person that kind of distance with no luggage through a city. They feel like steps towards the future imagined in Wall-E:

We’re so car dependant/absorbed that we can’t even look away from cars as a solution to our car problem. It reminds me of that Henry Ford quote (possibly joke?): “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” There are a lot of problems with cars in cities, just as there were with horses 100 years ago and everyone thinks the solution is a faster horse.

Blake Wexler phones in a Christmas message for the Daniel Kinno...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:19:24 +1000

Blake Wexler phones in a Christmas message for the Daniel Kinno and Rory Scovel episode of The Todd Glass Show.

Not for everyone but I think this is hilarious.