Month: April 2006

Images of Chernobyl

As a young person when this ‘accident’ happened, I only remember how it affected me. I don’t remember the details of the event, how it came to pass, how it affected others, none of that. Part of being young is you get to be selfish and self-centered. I know we’ve all seen memorials this past week as the 20th anniversary of the disaster has come to pass, but I wanted to share one with you that I found profoundly affecting.

A photo journalist has shared a few of the images he took right after the disaster and how it affected some of the local children. The page he has created also allows you to see a timeline of the event, and to possibly understand how the disaster came about. I think people spit on the lead-encased coffins of the people involved for a reason.

Sadly he has used Flash to make the page up, so please don’t take this as me supporting his technological choices. But his voice is an interesting one that exposes the human side of the disaster. It is worth listening to, and most importantly watching.

Less personally-touching was this series of images from the disaster – again using Flash. Certainly interesting to look through.

The Final Frontier – 39 Weeks Pregnant

Well, it’s hard to believe it but we are now 7 days away from our official due date. I’m not going to state all the cliches like ‘where did the time go‘, and ‘it feels like yesterday that …‘. No, I’ll spare you it all – though it is all true. Don’t you hate it when cliches turn out to be just plain right?

Anyhow, I’ve posted the last picture of Alisa and the baby, taken in April. You can see it at the bottom of the original post of pictures.

We have pretty much finished the nursery and I’ll be getting some before and after pictures up soonish.

The Emeror’s Bland Pablum

It’s a good day to be a Canadian music fan.

A coalition of Canadian music creators (that would be artists, producers, distribution companies, etc) has publicly stated that the current approach to dealing with online music sharing and copyright legislation changes do not represent their views. In fact they put forward three principles that nicely sum up their position:

  1. Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical
  2. Digital Locks are Risky and Counterproductive
  3. Cultural Policy Should Support Actual Canadian Artists

Check out their policy paper(PDF) for 5 pages of Canadian common sense. So I say everyone welcome the Canadian Music Creators Coalition!

In related news, that feisty law professor in Ottawa, Michael Geist, continues to point out that the emperor has no clothes:

In summary, CRIA’s own research now concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders’ computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services. I’ve argued many of these same things, but now you don’t have to take my word for it; you can take it from the record labels themselves.

I’m sick of being fed a bland mix of pablum and half-baked facts designed to make me fear digital music. Thank goodness some real facts are finally coming to the fore. Things get juicy when the polling company complains that Geist is misleading people (PDF). Geist provides a few comments on their comments too – good stuff!

Magnetic Fields Are The Future

I always thought that Magneto had the coolest mutant powers. Sure Colossus was probably my favorite character (closely followed by Wolverine) in the X-Men universe. But if I was ever asked as a youth what kind of super powers I would want to have (and strangely enough I never was), I would definitely say control over magnetic fields – magnetokinesis. It even sounds cool in science-speak!

This was only reinforced in Physics courses taken in first year university. They’re everywhere, they affect almost everything in the world, and they’re largely ignored. How cool would it be to have control over those?

Anyhow, I guess scientists are finally starting to figure out the secret to world domination that I had figured out by age 9. Props to them, that’s cool and all, but really – what took you so long?

They’re trying to hide their nefarious research under the guise of simple experiments, like a Magnetic Fridge from the people at Cambridge. The idea is actually quite simple: magnetic fields are manipulated within specific materials resulting in either heat production or heat absorption. The application of the method to a fridge is a neat idea. The breakthrough here it seems is that they have found a material that is safe for humans to have around i.e. it doesn’t contain arsenic.

But mark my words, this is the tip of the iceberg. Now that the smart scientists have started to catch on to my idea (though I suppose Stan Lee might have had it first) we’re going to start seeing some really cool use of magnetic fields and controlling them. Mark my words.

Internet Bartering – From a Paperclip to a House

An interesting site I came across today where a Canadian man is trying to trade a single red paper clip for a house. Impossible, you say? Well, right now he’s traded up to a year’s residence in Phoenix, so he’s not doing too badly for less than a year of work.

It’s an interesting exercise in bartering, Internet style. Each step he is counting on someone’s willingness to trade something for less than it is worth (to them – this is all relative). This may be because they no longer value the item they’re giving away, or they’re glory hounds. There may be some other reasons too, but I’m not really sure. I’m sure there are smarter people than me who can psycho-analyze this, but I thought it was an interesting read at least.

I still say the offer of a bar in Mexico for a year sounded almost too good to pass up – legalities be damned.

Would You Like Fries With That, Dude?

The word outsourcing has become a dirty word in the Canadian and American vernacular. In fact my own software employer has begun dipping its toes into that swollen river ever so slightly. Just to see how it feels, they say. Just to test the waters, as it were. Luckily I’m such a star that I couldn’t possibly be outsourced, but I feel for everyone else – I really do.

And now I hear that outsourcing has come to McDonald’s drive-throughs!

It all makes sense, of course. You talk to a little speaker phone – who cares where the person on the end side actually exists? Florida? Washington? Bangalore?

It’s interesting seeing how they describe the call center that is contracted out to deal with the incoming food requests. I thought my Support days were bad, but monitoring to that extent makes me angry just reading about it. And then to hear that they have to try to up-sell you? Blood. Boiling!

And why are these things important? Why, to save money of course. This is a capitalist society and all that bunk.

When the customer pulls away from the menu to pay for the food and pick it up, it takes around 10 seconds for another car to pull forward. During that time, Mr. King said, his order-takers can be answering a call from a different McDonald’s where someone has already pulled up.

The remote order-takers at Bronco earn the minimum wage ($6.75 an hour in California), do not get health benefits and do not wear uniforms. Ms. Vargas, who recently finished high school, wore jeans and a baggy white sweatshirt as she took orders last week.

The call-center system allows employees to be monitored and tracked much more closely than would be possible if they were in restaurants. Mr. King’s computer screen gives him constant updates as to which workers are not meeting standards. “You’ve got to measure everything,” he said. “When fractions of seconds count, the environment needs to be controlled.”

The whole article requires registration (or simply visit BugMeNot and find a free login) but it ends with this simple statement:

Ms. Aleman said that, over all, the system had improved accuracy and helped her cut costs. She said that now she did not need an employee dedicated to taking orders or, during the lunch rush, an assistant for the order-taker to handle cash when things backed up. “We’ve cut labor,” she said.

Ah yes, once again we see technology really helping those that need it most – the minimum wage workers slaving away under the grease gods. All praise the silicon tutelary!

On April Fool’s Day

In the spirit of April Fool’s Day, along with our pregnancy, I present a medical lawsuit for your perusal. With all these legal and crime shows on TV, I figure we’re all pretty much experts by now, right? What would you have done if you were on this jury?

Note – I don’t think the issue is a joke or is even slightly amusing, please don’t think the April Fool’s reference meant anything like that at all. The April Fool’s reference was more about the idea that most people would consider this a no-brainer, while some others think this is ludicrous. The hospital can’t be held liable for all the bad things that happen inside its walls – sometimes people simply can’t be helped.