Olympics? Bah humbug

I feel like an Olympic Scrooge, but I just can't get myself excited about the Beijing Games.

I'm sure part of it is that the coverage here in the US is (not surprisingly) focused on the performance of the US athletes, and despite the fact that I'll soon become a US citizen, when it comes to sport I'm still 100% Aussie. Well maybe 99% since I've developed a growing interest in American Football and the Green Bay Packers.

But that's not the full story since I can easily follow Australia's performance on the Internet but I'm still not really engaged.

I think the big problem is that it's all become such a production. It's like when someone hires a professional cameraman for their wedding and he takes over the day; there's just so much going on at the Olympics now that detracts from the real story - the athletes and their performance. And China's obsession with putting on a good show and winning the medal count just exacerbates that problem.

The other problem I have is that the selection of sports is just ridiculous, much of it driven by the need to maximise television revenues in the US. By what other criteria could baseball be included but not cricket, or women's softball but not netball?

The other problem I have is "sports" where the scoring is entirely subjective, stuff like diving and, worst of all, synchronised swimming. "Citius, Altius, Fortius" is the Olympic motto; it does not include "prettiest" or "best artistic merit" or any crap like that. If you can't measure it objectively, then in my view, whatever it is, it isn't a sport.

Some of the same criticisms can be levelled at the Winter Olympics (lose the ice dancing please!), but I'm much less jaded about those. That's partly because I'm personally much more interested in the core Winter Olympic sports of skiing (both Alpine and Nordic) than anything at the Summer Games, but also because it's still a much smaller deal and therefore maintains some of the true Olympic spirit and charm.

What happens to the good sci fi shows

One of the shows I've been watching on Hulu is New Amsterdam. After three episodes I'm really impressed by the quality of the story telling. It's not the first story about someone who is immortal but it's probably the most serious take on the question.

But today I discovered that the eight episodes online is all there is because the show was cancelled after less than a season.

It seems this is all too common for intelligent science fiction. Two other programs in this category that come immediately to mind are Firefly and Threshold.

At least this hasn't happened to the best science fiction ever to grace the small screen - the new Battlestar Galactica. That would be too frakking much!

Streaming television

After my very positive experience with the Roku Netflix Player I've been checking out some of the other streaming television options available on the Internet.

I was particularly interested in Hulu since the rumour is that the Netflix Player will soon also be able to stream their content as well.

Hulu is joint venture between NBC and News Corporation established after a falling out with Apple (seems they couldn't agree on pricing and revenue sharing for media sold via iTunes). Technically it's pretty slick; certainly better than the usual effort from large incumbent organisations. The biggest deficiency is that they only keep the last five or six episodes online. Too bad if you want to try out a show you missed from the first episode.

Unlike the Netflix service which runs on a subscription model, Hulu is based on the traditional advertising supported model of television. But I can't help thinking that they're failing woefully to exploit the potential of this new paradigm. As far as I can tell the ads are not based on the profile of the user, unless they somehow think I'm the target demographic for fabric softener and shampoo!

Nevertheless the potential is there and I'm convinced that this is going to kill television as we know it. The concept of watching a program at a set time has already been struck a major blow by DVRs but you're ultimately still limited to watching what you've already recorded. I'm looking forward to the approaching television model where you can watch any episode of any show any time!

Credit card fraud

The Justice Department announced today that they had broken a major credit card fraud ring.

It seems that the card numbers were obtained by hacking retailers' wireless networks. Amongst the list of affected retailers is Sports Authority which explains how my wife's credit card was fraudulently used back in April this year.

At the time we couldn't figure out how the number had been skimmed since she still had the card in her possession, never uses that card online and had only used it twice in the previous month, one of those times being at Sports Authority, and in both cases the card never left her sight.

We were incredibly impressed by how quickly our bank (Wells Fargo) detected the fraud - they called her the same day after only two fraudulent transactions which they advised us occurred using a fake card encoded with the stolen number. Reversing the fraudulent charges was reasonably straightforward so we didn't think any more about it until I heard the report today.

I'm a whole lot less impressed with Sports Authority's network security. Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt but as an IT professional I know that it's far more likely that the criminals exploited holes in a poorly implemented wireless network than that they were master hackers who defeated a state of the art system.

Terminal 5

I was very critical of the chaos at Heathrow Terminal 5 when it opened.

I had a chance to look for myself today on my way from Steamboat to Johannesburg. Things seem to have settled down and to be working as the should. My baggage made the transfer and my flights were on time.

I was surprised how big it is. It's actually three separate concourses.

The British Airways first class lounge is a big improvement on the one at Terminal 4. Much larger, the wi-fi is finally free and it has showers. Not as nice as the Qantas first class lounge in Sydney though.

However the transfer from Terminal 4 takes forever. In a straight line it must be about two miles. But the route the bus takes seems to go around the airport about three times!

Great airline rant

There's a great airline rant in today's Wall Street Journal.

Written in response to the idiotic email that US airlines sent their customers (yes including me) earlier this month, it uses satire to expose US airline executives as the incompetent frakking fools that they are.

And the beauty of it is that they asked for it. That email was a giant electronic version of a "kick me" sign that the airlines pasted to their own backs.

Typical whining from another protected industry. They should get a spine and grow up.

Netflix Player gets five stars

I just got myself a Roku Netflix Player.

I've been a Netflix subscriber for a while now. After some initial teething problems I've found it an excellent service. We especially like the wide range of lesser known movies that they carry, including several quite obscure Australian movies like this one.

The only downside is because we're away a lot we often pay for a month's subscription without watching a single DVD, and there's no rollover of unused DVDs to the next month.

In recent months I've also begun watching some of the instant streaming movies and TV shows that Netflix have available. The range is still only a fraction of their overall catalog but I've been very impressed by the quality, at least on my computer monitor. Of course that's partly dependent on my Comcast cable internet connection which I am pleased to say has been steadily improving over the past four years - from typical download speeds in 2004 of 2-3 Mbps to consistent speeds of 10-15 Mbps now.

I'm also a big fan of my Roku Soundbridge so when I saw that Netflix and Roku were offering a "Netflix Player" that would let me stream Netflix video to my TV for only $99, I just couldn't resist (not to mention, being a typical techie, I love playing with new gadgets!)

I assumed that the picture quality would degrade somewhat in moving from my computer's 19 inch LCD screen to my 42 inch TV, so I didn't expect the video quality to be great. Boy was I wrong. It's certainly not High Definition (the Player supports HD including a HDMI connector but Netflix are not currently making HD content available) but it's pretty damn close to DVD quality and definitely better than my non-HD cable channels.

I also expected the occasional interruption due to network issues (either at Comcast's end or on my wireless network - the Player has a wireless 802.11g adapter built in) but I've watched several hours of content so far without a single interruption.

Like the Roku Soundbridge the user interface is excellent - simple and intuitive - and the setup was a breeze. And the unit is amazingly small. The website says it's the size of a paperback but I was still surprised. It looks positively tiny next to my other home entertainment components.

For a first release I'd have to say that it's almost perfect - five stars out of five. The only criticism I have is that you can't browse the catalog from the TV - you have to access the Netflix website on your computer and add items to your instant play queue for them to show up on the Player. But I'd be very surprised if they don't fix that in the first software update.

Here's the silly thing though, and it's silliness on the part of Comcast not Netflix. Here in Steamboat Comcast doesn't offer their On Demand service. I've been told by the local Comcast office that this is awaiting a trunk infrastructure upgrade (which will also allow us to receive the networks in HD). But Netflix and I are effectively using Comcast's infrastructure to achieve the same thing!

ACLU misses the point

The ACLU issued a press release today pointing out that the Government's terrorist watchlist now has more than a million names on it. They make the perfectly logical point that a list that long is effectively useless in screening for terrorists:

"Putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning."

Of course the ACLU has completed missed the point. Yes, if your goal is to catch terrorists a list this long is counter-productive. But if your goal is to convince the great mass of voters who don't want to think too hard that you're not taking any chances in the "war on terror", then the longer the list the better.

Hell, I'm surprised there aren't three billion people on the list. After all every one of the 9/11 hijackers was a man, so if you've got a Y chromosome you fit the profile. Better to be safe...

Balloons again

This weekend is the annual Balloon Rodeo in Steamboat.

Marie and I walked down to the launch site yesterday, but we forgot to take the camera so I don't have photos like I did last year.

But I did take this one today with my phone camera while I was out rollerblading.

Dead trees

Since the mid 1990's Colorado's pine forests have been affected by an infestation of pine beetles which eventually kills the lodgepole pine trees that the beetles attack.

I've been vaguely aware of the problem and even noticed a few dead trees on the mountain whilst snowshoeing this Spring, but I was shocked when we returned home at the beginning of July to see great swathes of dead, brown trees all around the valley.

Fortunately much of the Steamboat ski mountain is covered by a mix of pine, spruce and fir trees so the death of the lodgepole pines won't leave it completed denuded. Nevertheless the dead trees do pose a hazard that the Ski Company and Forest Service will need to tackle one way or another.

Citizenship test

Yesterday I went for my US citizenship interview - another 450 mile round trip to Grand Junction.

I studied quite a bit of American government and history at University. How much? Well, for example, I've read every volume of President Woodrow Wilson's memoirs. What a mama's boy. Not my favourite president. But I digress from my main point, which is that I didn't expect to have any trouble with the test.

Nevertheless I was disappointed at how easy it was, consisting of the following four very easy questions:

• What do the stripes on the flag represent?
• What is the White House?
• What are changes to the Constitution called?
• What is the highest court in the land?

I was at least hoping for a question about the Declaration of Independence so I could quote one of the most beautiful phrases in the English language: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

But fortunately I wasn't asked if I like baseball. I would definitely have given the wrong answer!

Airline hell

We've just arrived home after seven and a half weeks on the road, involving trips to Australia (vacation), the Philippines (work) , Lebanon (my father-in-law's funeral) and two trips to South Africa (work).

Here's what that looked like in terms of flights:

Denver to Los Angeles (economy)
Los Angeles to Brisbane (economy)

Brisbane to Canberra (economy)
Canberra to Brisbane (economy)

Brisbane to Sydney (business - complimentary upgrade)
Sydney to Hong Kong (economy)
Hong Kong to Manila (economy)
Manila to Sydney (economy)
Sydney to Brisbane (economy)

Brisbane to Singapore (business)
Singapore to Abu Dhabi (business)
Abu Dhabi to Beirut (business)

Beirut to Dubai (business)
Dubai to Johannesburg (business)

Johannesburg to Sydney (first - mileage upgrade)
Sydney to Brisbane (business)
Brisbane to Sydney (business)
Sydney to Johannesburg (business)

Johannesburg to Sydney (business)
Sydney to Brisbane (business)

Brisbane to Los Angeles (business - complimentary upgrade)
Los Angeles to Denver (economy)

That's 63,504 miles between May 10 and July 1.

It went smoothly until the trip to Manila. Our flight from Brisbane to Sydney was delayed due to mechanical problems so Qantas moved us to another flight (with a complimentary upgrade which was nice) which was also late due to mechanical problems meaning we missed our connection in Sydney (only by 20 minutes which will be relevant later).

Their initial solution was for us to hang round in Sydney all day and then put us on an overnight Philippines Airlines flight, not an option I was happy with, so after some encouragement from me they booked us on a flight to Hong Kong with an overnight there and then a morning connection to Manila. Unfortunately the flight to Hong Kong was also delayed due to mechanical problems (four hours!) so our overnight in Hong Kong turned into less than 4 hours at the hotel.

Our flight back to Sydney went smoothly enough, but I've learnt that arriving at Sydney airport on a Friday morning is to be avoided at all costs, especially if you have a domestic connection. The international to domestic transfer at Sydney is third world at the best of times, but on a Friday morning you need to allow at least three hours. Of five connections through Sydney on this trip I made one successfully and that was only because I flew from Brisbane to Sydney the night before!

After missing the connection to Manila by 20 minutes, I was not amused two weeks later to be sitting on the aircraft in Sydney waiting to leave for Johannesburg when the captain announced that we would be delayed half an hour waiting for connection passengers from Brisbane! I wish the hell Qantas would be consistent on this, either wait or not wait.

Even worse was our trip to Beirut which wasn't under the best of circumstances anyway, but to arrive and find that our luggage had not been transferred in Abu Dhabi and wouldn't arrive for another 24 hours. Not what you need when you've got a funeral to attend. Between this and some of the most disinterested staff I think I've ever seen in a front cabin, I wouldn't recommend Etihad's business class.

The one major plus on our trip was receiving a complimentary upgrade on our flight from Brisbane to Los Angeles. Not something Qantas are known for.

Foam or cream?

"Foam or cream?" is the question when ordering cappuccino here in South Africa.

To which my response is "if I wanted a coffee with cream in it, I wouldn't have asked for a cappuccino."

Activist judges?

John McCain has flagged as a key part of his re-election strategy pandering to the "conservative right" in judicial appointments, especially appointments to the Supreme Court. He's using the standard code words - "activist judges" - to criticise judicial appointments that conservatives don't like, the implication being that conservative judges will somehow avoid "activism" and will stick to the letter of the Constitution.

What does it all mean? Shall we test it using the poster boys for judicial appointments during the reign of King George President George W. Bush, namely Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts?

Can you see where this is heading?

These judges are not activists, so say the conservatives and therefore it must be so. Which means that we can rest easy in the knowledge that they won't twist and turn the Constitution inside out to make it mean whatever conservatives want it to mean. Can't we?

They, not being activists, would never for example decide that the Federal Government can regulate the private, local consumption of medically prescribed marijuana under the powers granted it to regulate "commerce... among the several States" (the Commerce Clause) would we? After all, it involves neither commerce nor anything among the States so any other interpretation would be patently and wilfully absurd wouldn't it?

Oh, but they would and they have! It doesn't take a law degree to know that these men are full of it, that they are nothing more than unprincipled hacks who believe the end justifies the means, and that no principle is above delivering the outcome desired by those "conservatives" they owe allegiance to. Dare I say "ACTIVISTS!"

To prove my point, here's Alito in his dissent to the recent Supreme Court decision confirming that Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right to challenge their detention in a (real) civilian court:

... the decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

Hmm, looks to me like he's playing the part of politician, arguing the merits of the policy (not with real evidence or logic but with emotion and fear, but that's another story), rather than doing what a judge ought to be doing which is expressing a view on what the law is and the Constitution requires and nothing else.

So when John McCain says "I won't appoint activist judges" I can just hear my favourite character from my favourite movie reply:

You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means. (Inigo Montoya played brilliantly by Mandy Patinkin in The Princess Bride)

If only they'd read this...

I was searching for a quote from Winston Churchill to use in a presentation when I came across this gem:

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

If only George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld had read this before they created the mess in Mesopotamia.

A big farewell

My father-in-law's funeral is now over after four long and tiring and emotional days. I'm writing this sitting in the Emirates lounge in Dubai on my way to a consulting engagement in Johannesburg that I was supposed to start last week.

On Tuesday the family received condolences at home. Most of the visitors were relatives and close friends so it was quite comforting to receive them. The day was complicated only by the jet lag (we arrived in Beirut after 26 hours of travelling at 4 am and people started coming by around 10 am) and the fact that we had nothing to wear since Etihad had decided not to transfer our luggage in Abu Dhabi (to be the subject of another post I promise you).

Wednesday was the service and burial which took place at one of the churches in the family's home village (now a Beirut suburb) which fittingly we visited last October and which my father-in-law was instrumental in restoring after the civil war. The service led by the Maronite Archbishop of Beirut was conducted in Arabic so I didn't understand any of it, but I found it beautiful nonetheless.

Here's a photo I took of the church on that visit last October not knowing we'd soon be back there under such sad circumstances.

Viewing the body was harrowing but necessary to help us accept that he really is gone and burying my father-in-law alongside his parents in the family crypt was very emotional. So this was definitely the hardest day.

On Thursday the family continued receiving condolences in the salon attached to the church. The process consisted of us sitting in this large room from 10 am to 7 pm, standing to receive visitors and shaking their hands or kissing them on the cheeks (three times).


The visitors would then sit for some period of time (I'm sure the duration of their stay was carefully calculated according to some protocol but I didn't manage to figure out the algorithm) before repeating the process on their way out. This is quite a Middle Eastern thing to do. You'll often see photos of Arab political meetings where everyone is sitting around a room like this.

The process was repeated on Friday in a downtown location where fewer family and more political leaders visited. So I've now shaken the hands and kissed the cheeks of a sufficient proportion of Beirut's residents that I feel ready to run for a seat in the Lebanese parliament.

I always knew that my father-in-law was a man of some prominence in Beirut but I hadn't really appreciated how widely he was known and respected in the local community and in political and business circles.

I also knew that he'd maintained good relations with the Shiite community which is notable enough in a country renown for sectarian strife, but they really went out of their way to pay him respect; hanging banners farewelling him in the street; Shiite leaders coming to pay their condolences; and the overwhelmingly Shiite residents lining the streets and the Shiite shopkeepers closing their stores as the coffin was carried from the church to the cemetery.

One wedding and a funeral

On Saturday we attended the wedding of my cousin Kirralee (“Lil”) held on the beach at Noosa on the Sunshine Coast. The weather was perfect for an outdoor wedding and it was a great opportunity to catch up with my parents and brother, some of my uncles and aunts and my New Zealand-based cousins. I like to think of myself as a fairly practical person but I like the big rituals; they generally emphasise the very best in human nature.

Unfortunately towards the end of the reception I received one of those phone calls that everyone dreads–news that my father-in-law Youssef Matta had suffered a heart attack and with no warning and no reprieve was taken from us. Telling my wife that she had lost her beloved father was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

Now we’re making the long journey with heavy hearts from Brisbane to Beirut for the funeral.

In the twenty plus years I knew him my initial feelings of intimidation became love, and for my wife, to whom family is everything, he was a central figure in her life. Fortunately we had the opportunity to spend a week with him in Beirut in October last year and my wife visited him again in January.

As sad as I feel, the hardest part of this is knowing how deeply my darling wife Marie feels the loss and being able to do nothing to ease her suffering apart from simply being there. We have a difficult process to go through in the next few days with the funeral and associated Middle Eastern mourning rituals. Then, as they say, life goes on. But when you lose a loved one it will never be quite the same.

Return to Manila

This week we went to Manila in the Philippines where I had my first overseas job in late 1999, supposedly for ten weeks but I ended up having a series of contracts there throughout 2000 and 2001.

That was just the beginning of our continuing international adventure, but regular readers will know that we get back Brisbane frequently. In fact my Mum once told me she sees me more now that I live overseas than when I lived in Australia.

My last visit to Manila was in late 2003 (by which time we were living in Singapore) so I was interested to see if anything had changed in five years. The verdict? Not much. The traffic still makes getting around a nightmare; the air is still very smoggy; the hot and humid weather was a useful reminder of why I love Steamboat’s cool, dry climate so much; and corrupt oligarchs (think Russia without the oil) are still trying to run the country into the ground.

But the good things – the wonderful optimism and joie de vivre of the Filipino people – haven’t changed either. Not to mention the world’s juiciest but least stringy mangoes available almost year round for a pittance.

I’m not sure I’d want to spend a whole lot of time there again (and Marie is sure that she wouldn’t, so that settles that), especially when there are still so many other places waiting to be experienced, but I was reminded of why I enjoyed the experience so much the first time round.

Springbrook

Yesterday we visited my sister who lives in Springbrook, right in the rainforest about 50 metres from the National Park.

After lunch and coffee (and cake), my nephew Julian and I decided to walk the Twin Falls circuit, although with my young and fit nephew it was more like a forced march than a walk; the National Parks' information says allow two hours but we did it in 57 minutes, including the additional 750 metres from the end of the trail back to my sister's house.

The walk starts at the top of an escarpment where there are sweeping views of the Gold Coast.


The first part goes along the top of these cliffs.


But the best part comes after you've descended to the bottom of the cliffs where the path passes through the fissures in the rocks on the way down. That's my nephew Julian disappearing into the rocks.


Then the walk takes you through a lush rainforest past and behind two waterfalls (hence the name Twin Falls).



Here's the track from the GPS unit.


I would highly recommend it, but please note the warning from the National Parks' website:

DANGER: Sheer cliffs and waterfalls. One slip could be fatal — serious injury or death may result from walking near the edge. Keep to the track. Supervise children closely.

Music download

I made my first online music purchase yesterday. Two things came together to make this possible.

First, online music stores (like Amazon, which is the one I used) are now providing music in the non-proprietary MP3 format.

Second, they are now making online music available without DRM (Digital Rights Management), an evil scheme designed to hobble your listening and dreamed up by the devil himself (with a little help from his minions in the major music labels).

I've been waiting for these developments because in a field where technology is still developing it seems crazy to me to be spending money on music in ways that lock you in to a particular vendor (e.g. Apple or Microsoft) or a particular device thus preventing you from later on using music on devices that haven't yet been invented and in ways that haven't even been imagined.

So I'm happy now, because my wife will often buy a CD just to get one song she likes. It's so much better to be able to pay 99 cents and download just the song she's after.