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you could borrow mine I guess. feel free to use my bikes any time you need a sensible bike to do a race, like round taupo or this SS worlds thing. I wont be able to go for baby reasons even though it sounds like a great time.
Anyway, gotta go, the computers aren't going to program themselves!
viewyeah I bought that one. Seems to do the trick. Doesn't look like the photo cause I got the sprung not the fixed one.
viewThat is a great idea. Imagine if the Wellington City Council did that every Sunday, made one lane bikes only on the motorway out to Petone.
viewAwesome quote
In Europe, pretty girls on retro bikes with wicker baskets ride, carefree, to work everyday. Keeping active, while also keeping up the appearance of effortless chic. In New Zealand, by contrast, cycling is seen more as something for large groups of overweight, middle-aged men on expensive racing bikes - men who really shouldn’t be pouring themselves into fluorescent Lycra - to do on Saturday mornings, sweating and panting up the hills like sheep in the sun.view
It's a great presentation but much of the crux of the argument - that china an india are going to have fast growth periods - was based on his time as a student in india and some stats by the IMF. but fuck I mean he had a big stick as and it was thought provoking...
viewOn the topic of globalization, this video is quite informative.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_asia_s_rise_how_and_when.html
viewSounds interesting, I'm pretty keen to get involved, i'll have a talk to Chris at some stage about it.
viewI wonder wheather you have come to a decission which of these three languages you'll give a start. I am still undecided between Erlang and Haskell.
The cool feature of Erlang is it's in-built concurrency I immedaitely felt confortable and it's modern, yet only half-way backed web frameworks. The main downside is lack of packaging infrastructure, TCL/TK still used as main UI library and unfortunately a VM which lags behind the trends in speed. Some nice prjects build on Erlang like couchDB, riak or the nitrogen web framework. Everything seems to be in place for cloud computing.
The pros of Haskell clearly is the brutal performance and packaging mechanism (cabal). There is even a decent IDE (Leksah). I have not yet finished all of Haskells syntax, e.g. I have to understand monads first, but until now Haskell seems to have much more line noise than Erlang. What was the biggest surprise to me was the lack of implmentations of recent technologies, like a RESTful API, a document store database, key/value database or an event driven web framework.
I hung out on #erlang and #haskell. There are about 3x more people on haskell but on erlang. But on Haskell they are talking mostly about the language while on Erlang the main topics are about implementation and getting things done.
viewTo be honest I was quite taken with cyclocross bikes so you are on the money callum.
Except of course I actually do have two mountain bikes, not the best but they do the job.
viewHow much for the cyclocross? that's the sort of quirky weirdo shit that would suit don. with a cyclocross bike and the fixie he would have a bike for everything (except mountain and road biking of course)
viewSweet, I'll be doing this on sun the 20th with Campbell. Last time i did it i rode up to flagstaff round the back on Whare Flat Road. I'm interested to see how the track has progressed since last time i did it.
Get anything else done? Nickols Creek, signal hill, other side of Whare Flat?
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Heya Craig, long time no hear. How are you?
Their too ugly was one of the reasons, there were billboards around with minarets all over Switzerland, next to all the famous church towers. But this is an unlikely scenario. The main reason however is the fear of Islam and the growing Islamic population, a couple of quotes (from Swissinfo.ch) explain some of the concerns:
"Forced marriages and other things like cemeteries separating the pure and impure – we don't have that in Switzerland and we don't want to introduce it"
and another quote:
"However, society wants to put a safeguard on the political-legal wing of Islam, for which there is no separation between state and religion"
I think it's deeper than that. The Swiss are very patriotic. But over the years their have been a growing number of foreigners entering Switzerland, some to work, some were refugees. With this they foreigners bought along their culture, their dress and their behavior. They also did the work the Swiss generally did not want to do themselves, such as the lowest paid jobs. In the 90's there was a large influx of ex-Yugoslavs entering Switzerland, many of whom are Islam. The crime rate rose and other things "degenerated" (relative to the Swiss norms). There is a bitterness in the Swiss, usually it's unspoken, but sometimes when it is spoken it can be rather ugly.
viewYeah, metafilter covered it:
"Swiss voters moonlight as architecture critics"
http://www.metafilter.com/87041/On-Architectural-Criticism
I'm curious as to what sorts of rationalisations were used in favour of the ban. "They're too pointy! Someone will lose an eye on one of those things!"
viewYeah.
I have managed to answer all my questions by reading all the posts in their entirety
That was a classic "senior moment"
viewdon conclusively proved in a comedic series of recent comments that actually reading stuff is not his strong point.
viewAlso you should actually read some of the questions being asked.
random example:
1) Do you believe foreign corporations have the right to ownership of the resources of the poorer nations? Surely if the intention is to facilitate economic development and global trade, a better strategy would be to assist the population with the knowledge and capital required to benefit more directly from their wealth creation/extraction, rather than losing nearly all of the surplus to foreign investors.
2) Do you believe global economic growth can be sustained to the point where all nations are on par with the west? Is it even a desirable goal to expand the western consumerist culture, or even maintain it indefinitely in developed nations? Shouldn't we be adopting a less wasteful, more sustainable way of life, and an economy that doesn't cause suffering when conspicuous consumption decreases?
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I think Mike Moore makes a good point.
Trade generates wealth. Like Technology, Globalization is a genie that is not going to be put back in its bottle. Both "good" and "bad" things happen as a result of globalization, opposing it is futile and reactionary.
The question is how can we manage it in a way where the most people get a fair deal and fewest are screwed over.
viewCould be trackfield doesn't handle gpx that well. Try exporting as kml if you can and attach that.
viewHey $219 sounds like a good price.
But I don't use my phone enough to justify $60/month. I am keen on the Android OS but the HTC handsets are putting me off buying an android phone. As you mention the lack of 3.5m headphone jack doesn't bother you. Well it bothers me, the killer feature for me on the iphone is being able to get download news podcasts over wifi and are you really going to use bluetooth for headphones. 1. They guzzle batteries 2. Do you want to spend more on your headhones than on your phone? 3. I have not seen bluetooth headphones that don't look like they were used as a prop in a startrek movie.
The motorolla Droid is ment to be good and has the headphone jack but it maybe sometime before we see that in NZ.
viewI saw Russ riding home and he was all 90 degree turns and plowing through buidings and trees. I reckon that track is accurate.
viewThe thing is it looks sweet in google maps on the phone. All nice and smooth. I might try tweaking the logging precision on the phone's GPS
viewI have managed to answer all my questions by reading all the posts in their entirety. Must remember to do that before posting comments next time.
Big post about epic ride at Whirinaki coming up soon.
viewHmm, it looks like logo output from F1 Computer Studies
FORWARD 100
RIGHT 90
FORWARD 50
LEFT 90
END
viewplease just post about crashes, stupid things people said and speculation on who is the fastest and coolest. photos should be of injuries or bikes in the air/down a bank.
It's what the market wants.
viewthanks mike, looks like a good read. i will get started with haskell, but i may end up trying all 3 and see which i like best. i think half of the language is about liking it, and i like python. i actually like javascript too, it is actually a really cool language to play with. here is a cool video to show the good parts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook
viewi think most functional programing lean torwards having a better solution for threading than imperative programming. i think i may continue with ocaml and then see how i like it.
viewHaskell supposedly has lots of fancy features, the only one of which I can recall is
Software Transactional Memory. Which is supposedly good for solving threading/concurrency problems. Never used it myself tho.
if you want not worrying about your safety then you want:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=70708
viewI believe Stephen was making this point a while back here:
http://vital.org.nz/entry/title/the_decline_and_possible_rise_of_cycle_c...
viewCheck this one out, its even more crazy
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=70708
viewYeah, there are definitely some xenophobic Swiss. If you read the minaret article I linked to, you will see that the majority of the people supporting this are the rural, less qualified people, and you can really see a big difference between the rural folks and the city slickers. It's great when you look in the local phone book in some towns and there is just one family name, but hundreds of inhabitants :). I some ways I can see why too, although I don't necessarily agree. The black sheep poster was one of the worst. But what I do like about it is that there is really freedom of speech here, imagine what would happen in some other countries if you did this.
viewThis article suggests making cycling safer allows it to be come more main-stream (even gender ratio).
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=getting-more-bicyclists...
viewI know a Haskell zealot that I am sure would be glad to impart his knowledge. can put u in touch...
viewYes, I was working on this a while ago. I optimised some quaterion fractal code. Code is in C, optimisation was done in assembly using 3dNow! I provided my optimisation back to the creator, but it was never used. It was fun. Code ran 4 times faster in the end. I have to pull this out of the closet again.
viewErlang is used here at work, there is a messaging gateway written in it, I have had to interface to it using http but thats it.
There is also an erlang users group called erlonge that meet in the room next door to me once a month
http://wellington.geek.nz/group/erlounge-erlang-users-group
Some of the guys from perlmongers attend.
I know Andy had a play with it too, he may have a comment.
So erlang is out there in the real world, not sure about the others..
oh xmonad is writen in haskell, i am goignt to get round to switching to it from ion3 rsn.
viewI'm not cool enough to ride fixie ... but Chris at work has a better looking gutterball than mine, its a fixie and has no breaks, hes still learning to skid ...
Did you watch some of those dvds?
viewHey its simon!
I was thinking about you the other day while looking at these:
http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html#renders
I seem to remember you were doing rendering of 3d fractals quite a while back ... is that right?
viewWant to see a fractal. Check this out, it is the solution to a 3D mandelbrot set, pictures are stunning:
http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html
viewAwesome!!! It reminds me of my motorcycling days, wrong lane, pissing car drivers off, avoiding the law, daredevil overtaking on narrow roads (a.k.a a bridge) at top speed (180 km/h for that bike) with oncoming traffic and no room left but the center stripe. Fun times.
viewJust listed it all - Happy bidding http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=462823
viewWhile we are on the topic of new web tech ...
Saw this on a list and thought it summed up google wave nicely
looks like Yet-another-segway to me. also noted that their website doesnt mention how far they can go on a full change, bet its about 100 meters
viewYea, we were talking about these on spokiedokies a few weeks back, they dont seem to have taken over the world yet ....
viewapparently they're based in christchurch
@callum note they mention www.time.com but fail to provide an actual link.. surely that is deliberate?
view"Henri Desgrange, the originator of the Tour de France, and tyrannical cycling purist, is known to have denounced multispeed bikes, saying, "I still feel that the variable gears are only for people over 45. Isn't it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailleur? We are getting soft. As for me, give me a fixed-gear!""
view"Descending is more difficult as the rider must spin the cranks at a very high speed (sometimes at 170 rpm or more), or use the brake(s) to slow down. Nevertheless, the enforced fast spin when descending is said to increase "souplesse" (a French word meaning suppleness or flexibility, usually referring to the human body), which improves pedalling performance on any type of bicycle."
too much cadence for mee ....
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I got pinged for using the word drug, and the verify thing was really hard.
I'm wondering if classical music peaked along with easy firewood supplies back in the day.
view"The logical extension is that global music will peak when global oil peaks. This is probably some time in the future which means the best music is still to come."
Really, so which countries haven't peaked yet then?
I think some people need to wake up to the fact that the age of classic rock is gone and we need to prepare for a world where techno and rap predominate. Although i can see how this would be difficult to admit if one worked in the rock industry where even mentioning peak rock is career suicide.
How about allowing rock concerts in national parks, perhaps that will bring a return of the glory days?
(fucking spam filters and captchas and your name belongs to a registered user ... never had this bullshit with wordpress ... ahh the good ol days)
viewThere's a five-year lag between the peak in music quality and peak oil production! If we can isolate whatever mechanism rock musicians have been using to sense the size of the remaining reserves, we get a five-year lead on the "experts".
viewI liked the way some witty guy posted it on vorb with the headline "Cycleway Launched By Men In Suits And Cars".
viewMike your conclusion, as usual, is a bit pessimistic and indicates a missunderstanding of peak oil, rock music, and strangely, forward slashes.
The graph clearly shows that rock and roll music - a largely US phenomenon - peaked in the the mid 60s just before US oil production. The logical extension is that global music will peak when global oil peaks. This is probably some time in the future which means the best music is still to come.
viewNew Zealand has been calling itself clean and green way before anyone gave a fuck about CO2 emissions.
Clean and green refers to the appearance of the country and is a slogan/fiction used for tourism. The subsequent foreigners are not likely to see the CO2, phosphate and possums so they are not a problem.
viewCorrect me if I am wrong but doesn't using non-relational databases mean more logic must be done in code, thereby taking a step backward to where developers trying to solve the same problems over and over.
It seems that app-engine datastore is trying to solve this issue by creating a higher level interface to bigtable. Presumably something similar will be done for redis and the others?
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Yeah, it's all quite interesting. It's almost like reverting to ancient technology for certain applications. Amazing how many there are though and they all work differently. I keep looking at one or more each week but sometimes only for a few hours, just to see how they fit together.
The ones I'm currently interested in are Redis and Tokyo Cabinet/Tyrant. MongoDB is next.
viewWhere is the Saudi officer in charge of dip sticking oil fields when you need a response to your blog post?!?
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Mike, anna was just asking where the old posts are, she wanted to refer to the post about the indian ear cleaners ....
view@callum they dont loose money if people click on links that take them off their site. They gain money because linking to useful content increases the utility of their site.
viewstuff links to tardme on occasion ;)
I shouldn't think a link to wikipedia woud be their kind of thing though, hows ya gonna make money out of that!
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mike and i did these on the weekend and they are indeed coming along very nicely.
This is due do the number of tracks we are displaying. not strictly openlayers fault. I imagine...
Cheers for that Ian...
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