MikeFitz with overflow bit set…

Yes, “Laws” - plural.  I remember being taught that Murphy actually had three laws.

• Murphy’s Law 1: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
  (We all know this one.)
• Murphy’s Law 2: Document! Document! Document!
  (All bureaucrats know this one because, when Law 1 applies, one needs to have one’s backside protected.)
• Murphy’s Law 3: …
  (Nobody knows this one.  Apparently, Murphy forgot to write it down.)

———————
I’ve had some time to sit still and think about this recently after Law 1 applied to me in a medical sense.  I posted this as a comment over on the blog of Western Australian mate, Archie, who promoted it to his list of Collected Quotes About Science (Sort Of).  Thanks, Archie.

It’s April!  You know what that means - April Fools Day jokes.

The Freeze

A local chapter of Improv Everywhere staged a five-minute Flashmob Freeze in Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall at 1pm.  It was all over the local media.  Well done, folks.

The Fake Resignation

Scotty blogged that he had resigned from Microsoft and was off to Pixar.  For a second there, he really had me going.

The Comic Circle

• One of my favourite web comics, xkcd (www.xkcd.com) redirected everyone to another really good comic, Questionable Content (questionablecontent.net).
• Questionable Content redirected everyone to Dinosaur Comics (www.qwantz.com)
• Dinosaur Comics redirected everyone to xkcd.

One poor soul had all three comics bookmarked close to each other and thought that his Firefox was playing a practical joke on him.

The Funniest Joke of All

The funniest joke was one that Randall didn’t even have to write.  At xkcd, all the comics are numbered.  The last comic published before April 1 was number 403 at http://www.xkcd.com/403/.  The next cartoon published after April 1 was number 405 at http://www.xkcd.com/405/.

Why was number 404 skipped?  That’s right, have a look at http://www.xkcd.com/404/.  HTTP Error 404: Page not found. HaHa!

It has been interesting to watch the fluctuations in the number of pages returned by the Google search, (died in a blogging accident), referred to in my previous post.  As many commenters have noted, the number goes up and the number goes down.

It seems there are three forces at work here:

1. Clowns like me, MrCopilot and now Archie, create blog posts containing the phrase “died in a blogging accident”, the number goes up.
2. Spambots recognise the activity and start creating even more spam blog posts containing the phrase, the number goes up some more.  Here is an example of such a spam blog post.  (WARNING: It’s safe to go there but DO NOT CLICK on the links in the spam blog post.  They don’t take you to where you might expect.)
3. Google cleverly recognises these spam blog posts and eliminates them from its search results, the number goes down again.

It’s also interesting to note the difference in results returned by executing the same search at google.com and the again at google.com.au.

What’s really happening here is geeks are just having fun.  Some little boys poke reptiles with a stick to see what sort of reaction they get;  Randall Munroe, talented author of the xkcd cartoon, poked the blogosphere with an intriguing Google search phrase.  Same thing.

I know many of my friends have identified themselves as xkcd fans.  I suspect others are probably also fans, they just haven’t blogged about it extensively.

And speaking of friends, our local cinema chain has re-introduced allocated seating.  It’s caused all sorts of problems and I bet they didn’t once think about this…

PS. When you go to xkcd, don’t forget to hover your mouse over the cartoon and read the pop-up alt text.  If you don’t, you’ll miss half the joke.

Statistics derived from Google died in a blogging accident, that’s who.  Publication of this xkcd cartoon is an extreme demonstration of the Observer Effect.  To paraphrase: You cannot measure something without changing it in some way.

Cartoon by xkcd.

Bloggers everywhere linked to it and now even the spammers are getting on the bandwagon.  Search Google now for “died in a blogging accident” and the count is in the thousands.  Interestingly, I’ve noticed the number trim back slightly over the past few hours - possibly as Google identifies the spammers?

———————
Update: Sun 13 Jan
Google Trends charts for “died in a blogging accident” make interesting reading.  The chart for January 11 shows a spike 1 hour after the XKCD cartoon was posted; this is expected.  However, January 12 shows a spike at 6am PST; what caused this?

I fell about laughing (That’s oldie-speak for I ROFL’d) when I saw this.  Pensionbook has been around for a month or so but it was too funny to let slip by without comment.

Pensionbook by Steve Wildish at Straight from my brain.  (click picture to enlarge)

Most of it is just too true.  The only inconsistency I can spot is that I know for a fact that my mate Al Bridges has been friends with Cliff Richards for several decades.

There now seems to be quite a buzz^* around Edgar Jones.  Please excuse me while I race off to register edgarjones.com before it goes.

———————
^* That “buzz” turned out to be flies.

A packed agenda for .Net developers this month with two speakers.

First up, Leon Bambrick (aka secretGeek) and then International award winning PDA and TabletPC developer, Robert Crago.

Coming out of the garage: Build your own MicroISV

Leon, developer of TimeSnapper, will walk us through what’s involved in turning latent ideas into a source of passive income and establishing your personal software empire, without resorting to cyber crime.

Also don’t miss Leon’s blog, secretGeek; entertaining as well as educational.

A Pen is NOT a Mouse

Robert’s passion is the TabletPC (”The coolest thing Microsoft has done.“)  He is currently contracting to Education Queensland assisting in the introduction of SmartPhones to senior staff.

Robert will demonstrate:

• why today’s applications on pen-powered devices leave a lot to be desired
• how to harness the full power of the pen and dramatically improve ease of use
• several innovative pen-centric controls for both TabletPC and Windows Mobile devices
• Windows Mobile 6.0 WispLite ink and handwriting recognition, and
• saving precious screen real estate.

These details are also available on our QMSDNUG website at www.qmsdnug.org.

Please RSVP Early
All invited; attendance is free.  Catering this month sponsored by Candle ICT.  Because of this, please rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au before 8:00 Tuesday.  Thanks.

OK, so after ignoring many “Friend Requests” over the past few months, I’ve finally caved in and joined Crackbook Facebook.  It appears some people use that other name for it because it’s possible to waste a lot of time in there.

What tipped me over the edge was the fact that the upcoming Australian Blogging Conference has a Facebook page.  This, I had to see.

As it turns out, I’m glad I had a look.  What caught my eye was the “Developer” link at the bottom of each page.  Here I discovered excellent documentation on the Facebook Platform, the API used to develop Facebook Applications.  As one who is always interested in new ways of delivering data to the masses, I paid attention.

Now imagine that I had access to some data that a large number of people were interested to see (eg, the World Championship Marbles League, the Southern Oscillation Index, the countdown to Mrs Fitz’s next birthday).  I’d be keen to publish this as widely as possible.

First, I would publish a web service to supply this data.  Then I would distribute

• a Vista Gadget
• a SharePoint web part, and now
• a Facebook Application.

Here’s a link to my Facebook Profile.

This month’s QMSDNUG meeting looks at Workflow Foundation.

One impression of the .NET 3 uptake is that Windows Workflow puzzles a lot of people.  They are not quite sure about how it can apply to them.  Microsoft has focused on the “sexy” features of workflow such as “driving ASP.NET web site navigation” or the “Designer Rehosting capablities”.  Developers are asking “How does it apply to me?”

First-up, Michal Postula from Citect will explain how Workflow can help developers in their day to day application development.  He will show how this powerful architectural tool can reduce code coupling and increase development agility.  Specifically he will show how WF can apply to small and day-to-day projects.

Then, Joseph Plant will go into more detail focusing on the Pitfalls of Windows Workflow.  Joe will use demonstrations and code samples to hilight the things to watch out for in the current release of WF.

About the Presenters

• Joseph Plant. Senior Developer with Citect on Ampla, the Manufacturing Execution System. Joe has been with Citect for more than 10 years starting as a electrical engineer in their services department and then moving into software more than 5 years ago.
• Michal Postula. Technical Architect on Ampla. Diverse background ranging from startups to engineering applications to government departments. Key interest includes straddling the divide between business decision makers and geek satisfaction.

These details are also available on our QMSDNUG website at www.qmsdnug.org.

RSVP
All invited; attendance is free; pizzas, drinks supplied.  An immediate rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au will help with planning.

Huniii
Photo courtesy Aurelius

I am re-creating the blog of a good blogging friend, Huniii, who, as far as we can tell, passed away in May 2007 after a long battle with cancer.  Via her blog (huniii.wordpress.com), Huniii’s words touched the hearts of many as she expressed her hopes, fears, desires and aspirations.

As Huniii’s readers, we laughed at her antics; we cried with her on the dark days; we soared when her son did well on the football field and we feigned shock at some of her language.  Read some of her comments; Huniii could banter with the best.

What happened

Sadly, in recent weeks someone has cracked her password, broken into her blog and even boasted about it, writing some immature posts in Huniii’s name.  Some commenters politely queried the wisdom of this action and met even more immature responses.  Two days ago, I noted that Huniii’s blog has been taken down.

What I have done…

I immediately tried to recover whatever I could from Google’s cache before it fades.  Then, as best I could, I have recreated Huniii’s blog at a similar but different address (hunii.wordpress.com).  The only exception is that I am trying not to post any information that might identify her family.

It has been painstaking work, recreating not only Huniii’s posts, but her readers’ comments as well, taking care to get even the dates and times right.  In many places, I have only fragments from syndicated blogs to work with.  As I write this, the job is probably about 50% done.

…and why.

Note that I am not pretending to be Huniii and this new blog is not Huniii’s original blog.  It is my recreation of her blog as a trubute to a dear friend.

I have placed only one post on Huniii’s new blog.  While my name appears on that one post, the rest of the words are Huniii’s.  I wouldn’t censor a syllable.

———————
Update 6 Sep 07
Lori has just come back with a sensible suggestion: we should publish Huniii’s blog as a book with proceeds to either cancer research or a trust fund for Bugalugs. Any thoughts?

———————
Update 11 Sep 07
Aurelius, a good friend of Huniii’s in real life has documented what he knows of the last weeks of Huniii’s original blog.  It’s an interesting read.

But more importantly, Aurelius has put his finger on what we learned from Huniii;  that it is possible to truly love our friends despite their flaws;  even “Big Gaping Flaws”.

I am /looking for an excuse/wondering if I can afford the time off/keen/ to attend the upcoming 1-day Australian Blogging Conference.

The schedule features an interesting range of blogging topics, including:

• The Politics of Blogging
• Business and Corporate Blogging
• Legal Issues
• Blogs, Creativity and Creative Commons
• and more.

Location: Creative Industries Precinct at QUT’s Kelvin Grove Campus.
Date: Friday, 28 September 2007
Time: 9:00 - 17:00

The conference is hosted by
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation and
- QUT Faculty of Law
and is sponsored by
- our good friends at Microsoft and
- GetUp! (getup.org.au).