So I opened up Word 2007, and I went to type a bulleted list, and I went to indent the second item using the ‘tab’ key…

and it didn’t happen.

Grr.

But there is a solution. I Googled the problem and found the answer at http://help.wugnet.com/office/Turning-automatic-paragraph-indent-Word-2007-ftopict1065762.html. It turns out that during my work yesterday, I turned off “Set first- and something- indent using tab key” setting in ‘AutoFormat As You Type’. Huh.

This program is so complex it drives me nuts sometimes. I played with the idea of switching to WordPad for my writing, but WordPad can’t do multi-level lists. I might as well use Notepad. So I have to choose between “useless” and “over-the-top” when it comes to functionality. Grr.

• Side-scrolling shooter
• Flash
• Keyboard controls (the only downside to the whole game )

Why I like it

Shooting!

Power-ups! Big guns!

Massive circular saw!

Blueshift - circular saw weapon - awesome

Creative array of evil mechanic enemies!

I wear a suit and tie to work every day. This is despite the lenient dress code at my office. Last Friday I left the tie at home for “casual Friday” – I felt uncomfortable.

Strangely enough, in my particular office there is even pressure to dress down. From time to time, people will make jokes about me being “uptight” or “needing to relax”, or they will comment on how they would never wear a suit to work unless they needed to.

So the “conformist” thing to do would be to dress down.

However I feel that the suit and tie are a better reflection of who I am. I am a professional, not a slob.

And this strategy has paid dividends.

1. Whether right or wrong, people judge me on first impressions. So when an outsider appears in my team, they think that I must be more intelligent and professional than the rest.

2. Because I feel confident, empowered and comfortable with who I am, I can be more persuasive when speaking. And I sit up straight and work harder, because I feel good.

3. The others tend to dress up for special occasions – e.g. when a big executive comes to visit, or for a job interview. But they look uncomfortable in their once-in-a-blue-moon tie – meanwhile I look “in my element”. And it works on interviewers, visitors and clients.

Conforming or rebelling
Dressing well is not about buying $800 designer jackets, the latest colours and changing your hairstyle every time Beckham does. To me, that kind of over-the-top fashion is bullshit.

I mean really, how can you justify spending $400 on a pair of jeans, when it was manufactured by a labourer earning $4 a day? With 60 cents of raw materials? With some bastard businessman or snobby “artist” pocketing millions of dollars for simply being arrogant?

“High fashion” is about conforming. But really, wouldn’t you rather be yourself?

What matters to me is simply dressing well. Clean shirts. Pants without holes in the knees. Brush your teeth, comb your hair, shower every day. That’s not rebellious, that’s just healthy and polite.

In social situations, people get the impression that you’re safe and pleasant to be around. In business situations, people get the impression that you can be trusted to do a good job.

A $1,200 handbag just tells them that you need to buy expensive things to prop up your weak ego. And you are incapable of holding your own set of principles – thus you need the Fashion Channel to tell you how to dress. Plus, that particular bag is SO yesterday, so mission failed. Conforming with the ever-shifting demands of Fashion is a pretty intense task. Few people can keep up without hiring a professional to do it for them.

Dress well, that’s all.

Is a practical understanding enough? Are fundamental “first principles” necessary?

My company has a lot of processing jobs. People know how the systems work and how to get their jobs done – practical knowledge.

But they lack “bottom-up” “first principles”-type understanding. They don’t know all the features of the software, they just know the buttons that get their specific job done. They don’t know how people tick, they just know which buttons to push with their manager to get what they want.

If you give them a new computer system, or a new manager, or a new process… or change any part of their job… they will be lost and require weeks of re-training.

What does this analogy show us?

They can’t readily apply what they know to related tasks, because they only know very specific things, not general principles.

Bottom-up acquisition gives people fundamental understanding, so that they can work effectively in a broad range of tasks.

Let’s apply this to computer programming, since that’s relevant and familiar.

Suppose you learn to write BASIC. You only learn BASIC. You read a stack of books on BASIC. You’re an expert BASIC programmer, in a company which sells software written in BASIC. Are you any good to any other company as a “programmer”? No, you’re just a BASIC hacker with a narrow skill set.

That’s the problem with top-down learning.

References:

Never Read Passively: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Acqusition of Principles

Attention data is an entirely different species to user-created content. One is owned by service providers, the other is owned by users.

Some of the posts about data portability have strayed from talking about user-created content, the central pillar of Web 2.0. Now they’re talking about attention data, and some people are claiming that users have the right to control access to their attention data. This all pollutes the question of whether “data portability” is good.

User-created content includes photos and blog entries. It was created by the user, and the right to publish, export or retract that content should remain with the user. You should have every right in the world to revoke Facebook’s licence to store it. It is unfortunate when opportunistic “terms of service” steal this copyright from you.

Attention data, on the other hand, was created by the service provider. It is just a log file, created by Facebook/Amazon/shops/banks. It is equivalent to the file notes that financial institutions keep on each customer’s file. It is equivalent to the emails that sales staff in business-to-business companies send to each other internally.

It is data about you, but it is not data that you created. It’s not your property. So what if it’s based on observing you?

The attention data is rightfully owned by the business that put the effort into generating it. Thus you have no right to tell Facebook/Amazon/etc that they can’t have it any more. You also can’t instruct them to disclose it to a third party.

I think data portability, especially in the sense that dataportability.org use it, is about freeing user-created content from service provider lock-in.

So implement data portability and set user-created content free. Everyone benefits from data portability.

Anyone who works for the Government has to quit their job if they want to run for election. Bugger.

Commonwealth public servants are lucky when it comes to standing for Parliament. They’re generally covered by a policy to hand them their old job back if they don’t win the election.

It’s a hassle for everybody else though.

And the basis for the rule is what? So that members of Parliament, whilst in power, don’t have a conflict of interest. Jeremy’s suggestion on Joshua Gans’ blog, of letting such candidates quit their jobs after winning the election is quite a good solution. The persons would not have any time being under such a conflict of interest.

The Constitutions’s section 44, which prohibits persons under an office of profit from entering Parliament, is the blocker. It disqualifies persons from being “chosen or sitting as” a member. Maybe if our High Court feels like bending the rules a bit (i.e. any day of the week), we could have them “interpret” that to mean that a public servant can quit just as (or just before) being announced as the winner in their seat.

Alternatively, “interpret” that a teacher on unpaid leave is not in an office of profit at that particular time.

How else can we sort out this technicality that just makes things hard for people?

Zhanzuo.com have such a silly drop in traffic in late August? Well, I’m no expert on Chinese culture or web surfing patterns, but I can draw a few inferences from an Alexa graph. 56.com is another website funded by Sequoia Capital, which is the capital behind Zhanzuo. Look at its drop:

Who knows why, but both sites fell at the same time.

I’m putting this down to changes in the list of ISP’s prepared to hand over traffic reports to Alexa.

In fact, they’re the only sensible option.

Some people say that custom-built computer systems involve too much cost, time and risk. They say that it is better to take pre-existing, off-the-shelf products from software companies, and then adapt your business to make use of them. I disagree. In this current technological environment, custom-built applications are not just feasible, but they are more beneficial than ever.

“Back in the day”, that is, over 30 years ago, when computers were enormous and programmers were scarce, highly-qualified university professors, custom-built applications were the only way to go. The off-the-shelf products simply did not exist.

Thus, a business could not expect to receive an accounts management system without having one of these less-than-common professionals build it from scratch. That was expensive. But it was the only way.

Then, over time, things changed. Computers became more powerful, the networking and operating system infrastructure improved, and there were software companies producing lovely generic solutions in nice shrink-wrapped boxes. Custom-built applications still generally required hiring programmers to build something from the ground up. Even though programmers were more common, and indeed are almost ridiculously common, managing such a project was fraught with risk and oozing with costs. So, for a time, off-the-shelf products were the best option.

Now, however, the situation is different again. Years of refined off-the-shelf solutions now form a strong foundation for customised applications. Businesses can find strong, extensible foundations in existing operating systems, web platforms and rapid application development environments, either open source and commercial, depending on operational tastes.

In the 21st century, it is actually economically feasible to engage technology professionals to craft a customised solution for your specific business needs. Based on existing, well-tested and refined technologies, skilled programmers can create a solution to exploit your actual business environment, not just slot a generic box into your processes and demand that you learn to use it.

For example, say you want an enterprise collaboration system. Even just a few years ago, you would have had to choose from a number of existing products, each with their individual strengths and weaknesses. Each one perhaps meeting some of your needs, yet none of them actually satisfying them. Businesses were forced to train staff to use an inappropriately generic system, or a mix of systems, to get work done. Who loves spending money on training for bad computer systems? Not me.

Post-Web 2.0, you have a better option. It doesn’t take a NASA engineer to adapt open-source wiki and blog technologies to your business. Do you need to share confidential information with specific people only? Done. Do you need the ability to quickly propogate new information to staff across the enterprise? Done. Do you need to satisfy industry-specific regulatory requirements? Done.

But does your Australian operation need to conform to American customs? No. Don’t waste money on storing excess data that a business in South Africa might have needed. Customise your solution to keep the data you need where you need it.

Is your business a generic grey box churning out widgets, or an exact clone of a larger business elsewhere? Then maybe you should stick with off-the-shelf products.

So if your business is unique, and you want computer systems that really help your enterprise go places, get it custom built.

Apparently these days they do research into research. Fair enough. In Australia, we charge tax on taxes, victimise victims, and lots of other amusingly repetitive-sounding fun.

Not only that, but some bastard has been plagiarising! Naughty boy! It’s because of filthy cheats like him that I have to wade through 15 pages of “Plagiarism Policy” at work, uni and home. (“Oh wow, you would not believe the dream I had last night.” “Pat before you tell me, remember the plagiarism policy. You’re not allowed to have dreams that are the same as TV shows.”)

So plagiarism is apparently a huge problem, understated by all accounts. In fact, plagiarism is so prevalent that someone will plagiarise an article about plagiarism! What will we do about it?

Joshua Gans suggests checking papers against each other, like universities do with students’ papers. At uni, all our assignments get printed and loaded into a big washing machine. Papier-mâché ensues. But at other universities, they put them all in a computer database, and every student’s paper gets checked against those of both their peers and previous students.

It might take some effort and expense to systematically compile all the research papers ever written, so that they can be compared against each other. However, great benefits would arise over the long term from being able to check newly-”written” papers against the entire existing body of academic work.

If I understand the academic world correctly, all these papers exist electronically with various institutions, publishers and magazine companies. A reputable university or institution could surely gather quite a significant body of work for checking.

Take that plagiarisers! Plagiarists! False word-smiths! The computer will get you.

Not only does caffiene have scientific memory and productivity benefits for adults, it also helps prem babies remember to breathe!

From time to time, for various reasons, a baby is born prematurely. For example, one unborn girl was so totally outraged by the Roe v Wade decision that she felt she should protest. But how can an unborn baby protest?

Easy, if you’re smart about it. And determined. Like most things in life, you must be determined. She bluntly told her mother’s uterus walls that she wouldn’t be taking orders from The Man (or ‘The Woman’, as it were^[1]). She was coming out right then and there, four months before due or not!

So, premature babies are obviously awesome. But now we know they also like caffeine, which is cool.

I read in the paper today that it has become standard operating procedure to dope premature babies up on caffiene. You can mix it with their milk, or give it to them intravenously. I prefer intravenously, because lattes are for little girls, and I’m a big man. I’m not actually a premature baby in hospital; I’m just saying, if I was, I’d take my caffeine intravenously. I don’t have an ego complex.^[2]

The caffeine helps by stimulating their little brains and helping them to remember to breathe. This is the same idea behind letting your office staff go out for coffee every five minutes. Otherwise the poor little darlings are 6% more likely to become disabled, or die, from slack breathing and heart-beating habits.

Isn’t it a cute photo? I love babies. I’m going to go have a coffee now.

^[1] Personally, I’m not into sexism. So the term ‘The Man’ applies equally to a male Man, a female Man, or even a transgender Man during his/her operation. Maybe you’re sexist, so go find a Firefox extension that replaces ‘The Man’ with ‘The Woman’. Bigot.

^[2] You be quiet.