Take heart, everyone – it appears that at least there’s (finally) some awareness being built around this topic.

Below is a shot from my WordPress stats showing a very small snapshot of search terms that have brought people to this blog. (IP addresses, timestamps and other paraphernalia removed for privacy’s sake.)

Wow. It appears that people are a bit angry.

Good.

The thing is that Facebook’s primarily a site that people to go in order to keep up with what people they actually know are doing. It’s an adjunct to real life. It’s complements the relationships people have with each other in the physical world by making it easy to keep in contact and know what one’s friends are doing without being intrusive. Imagine texting hundreds of friends just to see if one or two of them wanted to go to the beach on a weekend. Ugh.

The new new Facebook is in danger of losing that niche by dint of the fact that it’s trying to be (dare I suggest it?) too much like MySpace or Twitter. Don’t get me wrong – MySpace and Twitter are great. (Okay, well, MySpace is a disaster, but Twitter rocks.) The thing it, though: they’re not really for keeping in touch with existing friends; they’re for making new ones online [insert obligatory, snide MySpace/child molester remark here :p], and for general awareness of what’s going on in the lives of people we admire or who are important to us, but whom we don’t necessarily know. For example, Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) has around 300,000 followers, all of whom have at least a passing interest in what he’s up to, but it’d be ridiculous to accuse him of having 300,000 friends.

Let’s not even get started on Facebook’s developer API, design philosophy or choice of platform. The developer API is a pain – and belive me, I know. I’ve written a couple of apps for it as a learning experience and, while it is usable, it’s far from well-designed. Put it this way: I’d fire anyone who worked for me if they’d developed it. The choice of platform is ridiculous – who writes such a massive application in PHP? Ugh. Sorry, fellas – that’s just plain dumb.

Let’s just accept, I suggest, that Facebook isn’t popular based on its technical merits. So what makes it popular? Metcalfe’s law (paraphrased) says that the value of any telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes. That is, that a network becomes more valuable the more people use it. Given Facebook’s technical merits, then, it’s not much of a stretch to understand that almost the entire value of Facebook is dependent on its user count and the interactions between them.

Here’s a hint, then, fellas:
1. Make your site useful.
2. Don’t ever let the application spammers loose again. You escaped by the skin of your teeth last time, but you were facing a mass user exodus during the “Invite 20 friends” wars.
3. Put your bloody feedback links back. It’s ridiculous that people tweet and blog their dissatisfaction with Facebook more than they tell you directly.

Screw it up much more, and the already-circling debt collectors will come around and take away and sell the gates to the ranch.

Honestly…

Upload your photos to Picasa Web Albums, tell Google to go and find all the similar-looking faces in your photos, and then identify each person – just once – and Picasa will tag them all for you.

Big Brother? Definitely. Scary? Yes. Convenience that outweighs the other two? Quite possibly.

Now, if only I could get Facebook to import Picasa photos and tags properly…

Yes, I admit it. I’m thirty. It’s a good thing I’ve officially retired from fencing, otherwise I’d now be eligible for Masters’ selection. I no longer have any age-excesses on any insurance policies (even the one for the litre-class superbike). There must be some good points to the three-decades-old thing, though – and I might even think of them given enough time.

Anyway, enough about age. This weekend was awesome, and first and foremost I have to thank Syndia for organising everything. I was told to keep the weekend free and that things would be arranged for me, and that’s pretty much what happened.

I arrived home on Friday night (my birthday, remember, was on the Sunday) and was told that my birthday weekend started that night. Syndia then presented me with what would have been an awesome present in its own right: a Nikon D-40 digital SLR camera (with a few additional bits and pieces attached). I was very, very pleased as I’d been musing about acquiring a DSLR for quite some time.

It’s only fitting that the first published photo from the camera be of Syndia… I did, however, start to get a bit suspicious when she told me to charge its battery because I’d need it the following day…

I’d had a pretty good idea that Syndia had organised a lunch or something with my family; what I hadn’t suspected until that morning was that we wouldn’t be arriving in any of our own transport.

Enter the second cool toy: a Porsche 911; mine for the weekend. Awesome. Need I say more? (OK, fine. Briefly: liquid-cooled 996 series; naturally-aspirated; drop top.) Now I understand why the camera needed to be charged beforehand

We arrived in style (but very, very quickly) at Lurleen’s at the Sirromet winery at Mt Cotton to be met by family and close friends, then enjoyed a rather nice meal. I’ll leave it to Mike to ‘fess up to Mum’s having to order for him

Toys ensued. Very cool. Thanks, everyone – I think Mum was a bit horrified, but I think they’re all great.

We managed to persuade Mum to come out for a quick spin around Mt Cotton with me. Her words were something like, “It’s just like a roller-coaster!” followed shortly by, “I want to get off!”

Dinner on Saturday evening was at Pat and Michelle’s place on the Gold Coast, where we caught up not only with the usual suspects but Anna as well. Pat’s home-made ice-cream didn’t go down too badly, either

Breakfast on Sunday was Devonshire tea at a little café on Mt Nebo after a stop at the William Jolly Lookout. It’s a tough life, really.

Thanks to everyone who made it a great weekend, and many, many thanks to Syndia for organising it all.

One influence that technology has had on business is that it allows the same number of people to do more work more efficiently. More often, however, it has lead to a smaller number of people still doing more work and the now-redundant people’s being made, well, redundant.

For volunteer-run organisations, however, the effect has been slightly different. These organisations tend to run at close to failure the entire time. Remove two or three key people (or in some cases just one person) from the organisation and it collapses.

Technological improvements that have allowed businesses to reduce staffing costs have done the same for the members of volunteer-run organisations, in that the organisation can run the same as it always has, but with fewer people doing the work.

In my humble opinion, this is a Bad Thing. People already have enough of a “me first” complex. In the past, this was balanced by those same people’s being required to assist by volunteering their time if they wanted their organisation to succeed and prosper or, in some cases, merely survive. Now, however, people can afford to sit back and demand results whilst simultaneously contributing nothing to the organisation that supports them.

I’m not writing this from a position of ignorance. I’ve been involved in many volunteer organisations (Interact, Rotaract, various sporting organisations etc.) for a long time, now. My first stint as a member of a volunteer-run organisation’s executive committee was at 19 years old, and I’ve been teaching, coaching, tutoring and/or administering since I was 14 or so. That’s getting to be a frighteningly long time, now.

My observation of the trends over this time is that people will take, occasionally thank, and then take some more. Almost never will people offer that which is most valuable: their time. When they do, they do it when they can see that an existing volunteer is busy, harassed and at the end of their tether. Believe me, that is not a good time to be pestering someone and asking if you can help. The best way you can help is get out of the road and then come and offer help at a later stage. Don’t be looking to help when people are around to see it; offer help when nobody is around to see it. Perhaps then people will take you seriously. Remember, it takes time to train volunteers and, as we’ve already established, that’s a scarce commodity.

Let me articulate the problem very clearly:

There are insufficient volunteers with the time, willingness and aptitude to run our volunteer organisations.

I’m talking about volunteer-run organisations in general at the moment, but I propose a solution that’s specific to sporting organisations. It’s not the only solution, and for as long as there are suckers people willing to contribute their time it probably won’t be necessary, but here it is:

Quit.

If people want a service, let them pay for it. If people actually value a service that a volunteer-run organisation provides, then let them sodding well value it at what it’s worth – i.e. whatever it costs to provide.

This won’t work for charities or organisations that provide essential support to those who can’t afford it, but it will work for sporting organisations.

Your organisation might fold. Ask yourself, then, if it was really worth running if people weren’t prepared to pay for it. Sure, free ice-cream is nice, too, but are you willing to purchase ice-cream out of your own pocket and give it away to people? People will be more than happy to accept your goodwill (and your ice-cream) but they don’t need it. I’m sure they’ll even smile at you and say thank-you. So what? That’d just be dumb, right?

A sporting organisation is the same. Sure, people will be happy to accept your gift of time and expertise (and, in many cases, your personal expenditure on their behalf for which you just never bother to get reimbursed), but they don’t need it. If they want it enough, let them pay for it. Let them pay membership fees enough to pay an administrator. Let them have a user-pays approach to any events the organisation runs. Outsource professional tasks (finance, information systems, advertising etc.) to professional third-parties and pay them what it costs. If it costs more than you have then charge the users of your service for it.

This is just my $0.02, so round down if you want. Bear in mind, though, that your demanding members still want a dollar for nothing, so if you round it down then the entire amount needs to come out of your own pocket.

In other news, yes, Syndia’s back from Rockhampton. Hooray! I flew up on Wednesday evening; we spent Thursday touring the town and then drove back on Friday. Rockhampton’s a nice town and the people I met were all quite pleasant but a) there’s nothing to do, and b) the entire town has a serious weight problem. Average BMI would have to be about 35; no joke. Average clothing size? About four sizes too small. Also no joke. Ugh. Keep it covered, people.

Oh, and my new, favourite quote from a random passer-by?

“They almost got together until they found out they were cousins.”

Says it all, really.

Blog of helios: Linux – Stop holding our kids back.

I think I’m going to adopt one of Ken’s quotes as a personal maxim: ”Ignorance isn’t stupidity, but choosing to remain ignorant is.”

… and if you read Ken’s blog post and think to yourself, “So what?” then please, please, please consider the above quote and choose not to remain ignorant

Just to be clear about this: I like TPG. They’re great. I’ve never had any problems with them and, believe me, that’s very rare for anyone in the software and/or telecommunications industries.

Sunday the 16th of November was a quiet, sleepy Sunday, and Syndia and I decided that we were going to go to Currumbin Sanctuary so that she could see some echidnas. It was a fascinating day and I’ll probably blog about that separately at some point, but the point of this post is what happened that afternoon and in the following days.

We’d been inside for a while looking at a couple of exhibits, and when we came out again it was raining pretty heavily. After leaving the sanctuary we headed back to Brisbane, stopping in on the way at Yatala for some food. We reached The Gap at around 6pm, turned on to Payne Road and started noticing a distinct lack of streetlights and leaves – a lot of leaves – all over the road.

“Hmm,” we thought. “We’ve apparently had a bit of a storm.”

Continuing around the first corner in Payne Road, we were confronted by the astonishing scene of fallen branches, entire trees and power lines all over the road. It looked literally like a jungle – if one hadn’t known that the road continued, one would have sworn that it just ended abruptly in thick, green foliage. We managed to proceed a bit further, and saw chaos.

There were fallen trees, crushed cars and snapped power lines everywhere. There were people walking around in their pyjamas in a daze. There were people parked on, under and within tree canopies that were lying on the road. There were people with chainsaws who’d obviously already cleared enough of the road that some traffic could get through. There were even pieces of people’s houses, cars, fences and trampolines in the streets. It was utter chaos.

In the immortal words of A. A. Milne, “‘Bother,’ said Pooh.”

We managed to creep along the road (bearing in mind that we were in Syndia’s father’s car, and really didn’t want to scratch it) and arrived at Syndia’s parents’ house to check that everything was intact. Observing only minor damage (with the exception of Syndia’s bird cage [thankfully empty] having been flung into the hedge), we aimed for home.

Arriving at our house, we discovered comparatively minor damage. There was a tree down on our roof, what looked like two entire trees in the swimming pool, one of the external floodlights had been shattered but things otherwise looked okay. Even my beautiful Fireblade was still upright in the carport, albeit covered in grass, leaves and mud.

Then we noticed another tree down over (and through) the wall behind the house, several more trees down into the pool, and several more trees on the neighbours’ roof. Oh, crikey.

Oh, and the shed was in the garden, but not where it used to be in the garden. Hmm.

For anyone who hasn’t seen photos and/or footage yet, now’s probably the time to go and have a look:

YouTube – The Gap cyclone of November 16 2008 – Brisbane QLD Australia

YouTube – Brisbane Storm – The Gap gets pulverised!

YouTube – TV Newsroom Floods – Savage Storms, 16 November, 2008

2008.11.20.The Storm

To cut a long and moderately painful story short, we were without power from Sunday afternoon until Wednesday morning, had no drinkable water for the same period because the roof of The Gap Reservoir fell in (and thanks to the army guys from Enoggera for trucking out drinking water to everyone!), and spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday doing nothing but clearing debris, chainsawing fallen trees off roofs, walls, fences and streets, and generally cleaning up. Did I mention that I love my chainsaw?

On the bright side, however, our house is intact with only very minor damage. We had a tree on our roof. Hooray. One of the neighbours completely lost their roof – and pieces of yet someone else’s roof ended up in our swimming pool. (We just didn’t see them initially because they were covered by a couple of trees.)

The QFRS, SES, Energex, the Brisbane City Council, 2CER and assorted others from Enoggera Barracks, the Red Cross and all the other volunteers and emergency services employees deserve nothing but praise for their response to the disaster. The Gap, Ferny Hills and some surrounds were officially declared a Natural Disaster area and the response from everyone on the ground was nothing short of magnificent. Hats off to you all. Thanks heaps to Tony and Fadge for turning up and helping to clear some of the trees, too.

A special mention has to go to John, Dave, Matt and Steve from the Ripley Valley Rural Fire Brigade, who turned up on our doorstep on the Wednesday afternoon and asked if there was anything they could do to help.

I told them that I was fine with all the other trees, but that there were a couple of palm trees down and leaning on the neighbours’ roof and that I wasn’t game to start removing them on my own as I didn’t want to cause any damage to their house.

Dave promptly sent Matt back to their truck for his chainsaw, then jumped up onto the roof and fired it up while Matt went around to make sure the neighbours (and their dogs) were out of the way.

Half the trees went to one side of the fence, from where the RFB blokes dragged them out to the pile on the footpath, and the other half went to our side where I did the same.

In around an hour the entire stand (poor word choice, perhaps?) of fallen trees was gone and the four of them just moved along, ice creams from Syndia in hand, to the next house in the street to ask if they needed anything. Legends, all of them.

Why? Because if enough of us do it, perhaps Microsoft will fix some of the issues before we’re lumped with the thing for real.

There are a couple of things about the new beta (build 14.0.5027.908), however, that are driving me completely insane.

Firstly, Microsoft, could you please remove the stupid warning bar telling me that “Clicking this link might open your computer to security risks.” For one thing, funnily enough, I know that. I should at least be able to make it go away after it’s been displayed once. For another thing, it’s warning me about a link that I sent, that just happens to be in my message history.

Secondly, the sign-on in multiple places feature is an absolute pain, even when it’s supposedly turned off. It still keeps telling me that I’ve signed in in multiple places, even when the very next thing it does is sign me out. It also means that if I turn the feature on and then sign out of one machine for a few minutes, messages to me aren’t presented as offline messages; they just never seen at all until I happen to move to the other one. That strikes me as a bit silly.

Finally, although it’s petty: The whole point of having an adjustable profile picture size is to provide more screen real estate for messages. In the new Messenger, if I make my profile picture smaller, that’s all that happens. That’s kind of silly…

All in all, IMHO the new Messenger "beta" should really have been called an early alpha. Good ideas, but awful implementation.

The thing is, though, that over the past couple of months so many other appliances have died (either a timely death or death by misadventure) that it’s going to be a bit of a novelty to not have to replace something this month. I’d thought that the fridge had been damaged by the recent storm, but it appears to have survived (almost) unscathed. Hooray.

Incidentally, why am I still awake at this hour? Blame it on another appliance. The Kreepy Krawly got stuck

“I thought it was a bit incongruous when I saw little Charlotte sawing open someone’s head.”

“I tried to explain to him why these things were important, but then I gave up, and just said, ‘You should probably go now.’”

Not the way you’d want your interview to end…

As it turns out, they’re actually prevented by our legislation. None of the commercial stations are permitted to multi-channel; only the ABC and SBS. Buggered if I can understand that.

Not all the blame for the woeful coverage can be laid at the federal government’s door, however – I’m sure that three streams from Seven would have had the same woeful switching, the same pathetic commentary (come on, people, at least *pretend* you’re not reading from a script provided by BOCOG) and the same lack of interest shown in any sports in which Australia wasn’t a medal hopeful.

I still can’t believe, for example, that they broadcast the entire football match between Australia and Argentina last night. Sure, it was great to watch, but weren’t there any other sports on in those 90-odd minutes? Oh, never mind – our synchronised divers placed 5th, and it only would have taken 2 minutes to give them a bit of coverage, but that would have required commentators who knew something and a producer who actually gave a toss.

So really, it’s the government’s fault that FTA viewers only get one woeful channel instead of three woeful channels, but the blame for the degree of woefulness still lies fairly and squarely on Seven.

Foxtel? But that involves giving Telstra money. Ugh. YouTube is your friend.

My next magic trick will be persuading Mum to come for a ride with me…

In other news, I’m hoping two things for tonight’s opening ceremony: that China actually puts on a decent show (they did invent fireworks, after all), and that a human rights/free Tibet/be nice to the Dalai Lama protester makes it onto the world stage where the Chinese government can’t do a *thing* about it. “Free” ‘net access for journalists, indeed…

The toy? A brand-new CBR1000RR, otherwise known as a Fireblade. I’m getting a black and silver one with (how sad is this?) a helmet to match. I know, I know… Tony’s going to give me a lift to the dealership tomorrow to pick it up. I can’t wait

Sorry, Mum… If it’s any consolation, this one’s more reliable – and the brakes are even better…

I’d been going to hire a scooter today to explore the city, but we ended up getting a tour of HMAS Perth from Henri instead. Absolutely fascinating. Don’t get me started on HMAS Onslow, either – there are some stories to be told there, I’m sure…

In other news:

The best fish and chips to be had in Fremantle are at Kailis’ Fish Market.

The best (most interesting) place to eat (and drink) in Fremantle is Little Creatures.

The most interesting ship in the port is HMAS Perth, semi-affectionately known as HMAS Parts Bin, although that’s a little cruel to the ship and those who sail on her.

I’ve never been to Perth before, and have decided that I quite like it. It’s a nice city. It seems a bit quiet, though, and I think I like it in the same way that I like Brisbane. I’m not convinced that I like the idea of a ten-hour round trip just to get somewhere that’s just like home…

We took a practice walk to the Fremantle Hospital this afternoon so that there were no surprises on Syndia’s arrival there tomorrow. Seen one, seen ‘em all, but at least we didn’t rock up and see a sign pointing to some unit that she didn’t know they had, so hopefully there won’t be any surprise patients tomorrow.

We’re staying at the Esplanade Hotel. They claim outdoor, heated spas, which I’m going to get to enjoy and Syndia won’t. There are *some* advantages to just being the practice dummy, at least…

The results? See for yourself when I post the photos

Hats off to Ed Hyde-Page, who comfortably wins the award for the most brave-but-stupid action of the night, in picking up an entire burning log (yes, right out of the bonfire) and throwing it back in several seconds later. Fadge and Simon hadn’t been planning on a trip to the emergency room, but trips to Logan Hospital’s ED late on a Saturday night are always an edifying experience, so I’m sure they didn’t mind *too* much…

In other news, I’m a bit irritated with Facebook’s RSS importer. Sorry people whom I’ve tagged in previous notes; it does weird things and occasionally duplicates stuff I’ve written, which means you get tagged twice – and also means that I have almost 40 notes to go and delete one by one. Grr.

I know that Intec’s offering decent incentives for him to go but after hearing his stories I still don’t think I could subject myself to the discomfort of doing the same sort of thing. If I ended up somewhere where I had to shave and clean my teeth with bottled water – and was afraid to shower – I think I’d be on the next flight out.

Still, I’m impressed that he’s doing it, and hope that it all goes well. Some of the stories, though…

In other news, there’s now a salsa class that runs once every month just outside Zanetti’s. I don’t know if I’ll become a regular, but since it’s also on the pizza/pasta night, it might be worth a look…

For one, I’ve actually managed to get some work done without being interrupted, which has led me to a depressing realisation: I can do more in two hours without being interrupted than I can during a whole normal business day. Bugger :p

The weekend (apart from today) was actually pretty good; breakfast on Saturday morning, and a ride and a BBQ (happy 30th, David!) on Sunday.

Syndia picked up some foam rubber for her briefcase (exam toolkit), and we picked up a few remaining items that she needed (ophthalmoscope, new stethoscope etc) and she spent an hour happily cutting shapes out of the foam to make them all fit. Of course, after she’d finished, she wanted to practise her examination skills, which mean that I got to be poked, prodded and stuck with pins (literally!) once again. Fadge dropped around on Sunday evening, too, which was great – Syndia’s eyes lit up at the prospect of another victim, and she promptly started sticking pins into him as well.

In other news, I’ve been experimenting recently with different ways to publish photos, since I’m sick of having so many stashes of them around the place, so many backups, and so many different ways of tagging people in them. I’ve tried Flickr; I’ve tried Picasa; I’ve tried Facebook and I’ve even written my own RSS feed generator for uglybugger.org (which fails only because there are too many photos and most feed readers barf).

I’m thinking of settling on Picasa, primarily because it has a really nice Facebook uploading application. What does everyone else do? Anyone?

I’m also rather enjoying having a semi-working blog again, too, hence the moderately-inane entries that are probably going to appear over the next couple of weeks. Sorry.

If anyone reads this, please let me know if you think it’s worth-while