A Farewell to Kindle DX

I have meant to sell my Kindle DX for a while but was prevented from doing so by various forces in life. I was slightly affected by the news that Amazon quietly removed the Kindle DX from its inventory but we saw it coming all along did not we?

Let's face it, the Kindle DX was a flop. It was meant to take over the textbook and newspaper market, however the technology was simply not there. It was priced way too high ($489) when it was released and have always had an aggregation of minor issues. By the time most of these annoyances were fixed with the graphite edition, it was too late to capture the hearts of readers and publishers as well, especially the latter who saw the iPad as a better platform to deliver their increasing multimedia content. Amazon itself did not help by giving the DX as little support as they could, and it never saw a truly global release.

I have always held a low opinion of the iPad , at least the first two iterations, however the new iPad really won a change of heart in me. The screen has a whooping 261dpi and full RGB colour gamut, which is better than 90% of the laptops you can buy. It is great for reading everything from books, journal articles, textbooks and of course manga. Once you have seen it with your own eyes you will be convinced - or else get your eyesight checked by a professional.

The main problem is with the less than ideal automatic brightness detection - you need to manually tweak it as lighting changes to minimise eye fatigue. The other project relates to the lack of proper font management in many apps - Greek letters and other symbols tend to disappear from random places, while it is not too bad for biology I assume this is going to be an issue for mathematicians and physicists.

 Note the incomplete differential equation, all the greek letters are gone

Anyway thanks to Amazon for trying, thanks to Apple for making something that's just better and thanks to Yifan Lu for developing the firmware hacks that made me keep it for much longer. Maybe one day we will see a comeback but for now, adieus.


 

Also, the new iPad still has too much glare to be viewed under direct sunlight - with the high dpi screen matte screen protector is not the solution, might as well cover one's head in sand.

Farewell 2012

Fitting song for the occasion, taken from a post that I started 2 years ago but never finished.

No, that's not the worst thing. I have recently decided to use Evernote again. After logging into my old account I found a couple of todo lists I wrote back in March this year. Sadly, NOTHING on that list has been completed yet.

Seriously, 2011 went in a blur. I have sorted of managed to finish a degree and contemplating another but my life is not going anywhere as we speak. I hope 2012 will bring some much needed changes.

New Kindle for a New World

Yup, the new Kindles are here and the prices are better than I ever thought. For those in the US you can get a subsidised e-reader for as little as $79. For the same price you get your choice of the new namesake Kindle Touch or the same old Kindle 3. A steep discount up to $40 (already applied in the image above) are available for those who sold their souls agrees to receive and view paid advertising while they are not reading.

The new kindles reminds me strongly of their Sony counterparts with silver-ish covers and minimalistic design. Heck, the touch version does not even come with physical page turning buttons.

While the display quality of the first Kindle left plenty of things to desire for, it is possibly the most ergonomic Kindle to this day. The subsequent Kindles saw a gradual improvement to everything except to the buttons (not including K3's five way controller which I am fond of) with the keyboard on the two Kindle DX models bordering the realm of uselessness. Now with the touch version they completely did away with physical keyboard.

 

More virtual QWERTY keyboard, you must be kidding

If you ever tried to type anything longer than a short email on any modern tablet you will understand my frustrations: They are simply painful to type on. Qwerty keyboard was designed for physical keys, not glass surfaces with no tactile feedback.

I am already sick of touchscreens which seems to find its way into everything between the space shuttle and the common refrigerator. Before 2007 it would be outrageous to sell something without physical keys, now the reverse seems to be true. 

Rant is over, let's get back to the topic.

Preliminary teardowns suggest that the lowest priced Kindle came with a Cortex-A8 based SoC, beat that Nokia. However the RAM and battery capacity has all been sliced by a half to reduce the overall cost.

Do I have any desire to upgrade my current complement of reading devices(consisting of a Kindle DX International, a Kindle, er, Keyboard 3G not to mention smartphones and computers with Kindle clients)? Well not really. The hardware on the entry level model is rather limiting to be an upgrade; the CPU bump is a nice touch but the halved RAM killed it for me. The smaller battery, while drawing much criticism, should not be a serious issue in this day of age when we have already accustomed to charge our gadgets once per day. I don't see much point in a touch operated e-reader let alone a multimedia tablet. Egadget has summed my opinions rather eloquently in an earlier post that in essence, nobody apart from the tetraplegic really needs a tablet. The current craze for bigger screen size and touch gestures is nothing more than a invention like the bunch of merchants of Edinburgh who invented the myth of Highlander culture in the 18th century.

 

Meh

To its saving grace, Amazon had a sensible grasp on the best use for tablets: an advanced entertainment slate by stripping all the purported productivity features. In any case, everybody agrees that the Kindle Fire is the android twin of RIM's playbook soon to be forgotten.

Like it or not, Amazon is the internet's upcoming Wal-Mart and the more likely entity to change everything again about the way we read. I can already see Kindles being given for free in exchange of a certain amount of book purchases or Amazon Prime subscriptions, wait, I have seen something like this already....

Enters awkward opera, my favourite rendition of Der Hoelle Rache by the venerable Diana Damrau:



P.S. If you own a Kindle 2/DX like myself it is highly recommended that you flash  Yifan Lu's hacked 3.1 firmware. You lose a few unimportant functions such as active content and TTS but get greatly improved reading experience, so check it out. If you don't have access to a K3 to extract the files, tweet me @DillADH and I will help you.

Canadians, Always on the Cutting Edge

In case you were not a huge follower of ice hockey (not that I know anything about it), Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup final at home, widespread rioting ensures.

Very considerate self-censorship 

Worthy of the Pulitzer Award (In case you did not get the joke, click here)

Note to myself: So this is how you set a car on fire

 Did you spot the ginge? Did you?

Duck and cover? Nah, a real anarchist throw them back 

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Have not checked 4chan yet, but this feels like instant meme material, I offer my own image macro below:

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Posting of serious content will resume in late June after my exams are done, I promise, yeah.

...there is nothing new under the sun

It amazes me how quickly people can forget things. Gevey and Rebel have been selling so-called "Unlocking SIM card" for a number of years and people reacted as if these named never existed before. If my memory serves right I bought my APDU kit from Rebel not long ago(before they became involved with i4, of course).

When Gevey broke the news that they have an working SIM interposer for i4, most people reacted in disbelief. Gevey themselves did not help when they released a (poorly) edited demo video and everybody was convinced that it was just another scam.



However, other reports soon emerged with some important details: First of all it seems to work, however it requires dialling 112 and data service only works if you enable Data Roaming. In hindsight it makes good sense why Gevey did not want us to know these things before they could ship the product: it can be copied very easily once the methodology has been figured out. In fact the same protocol/exploit has been found by other as early as November 2010 but nobody thought it could be made into a product.

They did come up with other interesting accessories such as this i4 dual-SIM device which can be reprogrammed to act like a gevey  

Gevey only made it with meticulous planning: While they have been dropping hints about their product a long time ago, announcement was only made after the Dev Team admitted that they have no baseband unlocks - back in 2009 Gevey and others almost went out of business when ultrasn0w came out and there are tens of thousands of old SIM interposers gathering dust in their warehouses. Mass production followed soon enough to saturate the market, price was initially high to make sure they get a fair scoop of profit before copycats and negative feedback could ever appear.

On the contrary, Rebel made a number of bold claims ("No need to use the illegal number[sic] 112", "World First", "Untethered unlock", btw do we even have a tethered unlock in the first place?) and failed to back them up with evidence. Release date were pushed back a few times, shipping charges are exonerate and the worst part: They don't even work, at least not as advertised.

Anyway let's get to the methods:

What you will need:

Programmable SIM Card - Preferably the newer types and of course it needs to be cut to fit in the SIM tray.
SIM Programmer - Those PL-2303 USB dongles are cheap and easy to find on ebay. The more expensive smartcard programmers often based on the R200 PC/SC chipset is an overkill and does not work well with 64-bit Windows. For cheapskates like myself, you can build a simple circuit that allows direct connection via serial port.

SIM Data - Three out of four parameters, namely IMSI, ICCID and SMSC are stored on the SIM unencrypted, however the main authentication key Ki is not. Best way to get it is to ask your mobile service provider to disclose these figures for your personal use, and I know some carriers in UK that allows you to have a back-up SIM. There are various "solutions" for sale over the internet to obtain your Ki by brute force however there are good reasons to avoid them:
A. The key is never transmitted directly, instead it is used within the SIM card to encrypt a random string sent from the network. Given enough time, a collision could be found to deduce the key, however most SIM cards have a built-in counter that disables the SIM after an unknown number of failed attempts so brute-force will never work. You have been warned and it is your fault if anything happens. BTW anybody that claims to be able to obtain Ki in mere minutes is probably fraud material since the speed is constrained by the very limited computation power of the SIM chip.
B. Cracking SIM cards, even your own SIM, is still illegal because the SIM is not the end user's property (it always belong to the provider) and most carriers have clauses in their Terms of Service that forbade any tampering with SIM cards. While they are unlikely to take anybody to court, you will have a lot of explanation to do after a few requests to replace your SIM card.

For those with legitimate access to their SIM data:

1. Write your SIM data to the blank SIM, leave ICCID, SMSC and Ki as is and replace the first eight digits of your IMSI with 08091010.
2. With your original SIM in your i4, dial 112 and immediately disconnect.
3. Toggle flight mode ON
4. Eject SIM tray.
5. Replace SIM with the one we programmed.
6. Toggle flight mode OFF, you should have reception in a few seconds.

My earlier comments and FAQ for Gevey applies for the method as well. Chances are you will retain the reception after reboot, however there might be issues with data and incoming calls. There is some room to optimise the outcome following a reboot but it is impossible to test on every single MNC/PLMN/VLR/MSC which could all have a different authentication protocol. This is why Gevey decided to play it safe by implementing an elaborate STK menu to require 112 dialing following every reboot; Rebel did away with the STK with the hope that it might allow some users to restart their phone without losing reception, yet they ended up with a disappointing and erratic product. 

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I have tried to find a way to make the method work without having to dial 112 but so far it appears impossible unless the baseband FW is patched to handle TMSI like it used to prior to 05.11.07. Not mention if we were able to patch the baseband directly we would already have a software unlock.

So here you go folks, it's the "unlock" we have been talking about for the past two months. All's right if it works; don't lose any sleep if it doesn't work for you - after all it is just a phone and we have more important things to worry about in dear life.

P.S. And I must agree with @sherif_hashim that "money for unlock = bullshit"

Tips for Greenpois0n RC5 Jailbreakers

Okay, RC5 is finally out and working to provide untethered JB for 4.2.1 on all devices, what does this mean?

• Although this had not been officially confirmed, the exploit used here is, more likely than not, the long awaited SHAtter. I am fairly sure because the JB comes with custom boot logo (and it is even animated) so it has to be an iboot/kernel level JB which is not exactly abundant.
• Chronic Dev Team was going to hold onto SHAtter for as long as they can, however it has been patched in beta versions of iOS 4.3 therefore there is no longer any point to save it anymore. They were almost pushed to use it for 4.1 back in October; however limera1n was released just in time so it did not happen.
• There is currently no usable exploit for 4.3 and up, however Redsnow's Monte mode should allow JB on all future versions as long as you have the shsh blobs for 4.2.1. (The essence of Monte is to insert a patched earlier kernel version at iBoot level, hence the blobs are needed by iTunes to sign the kernel and allow it to load untethered)

As for the greenpois0n software itself, it is still barely usable at the time of writing. You might remember that it took four RC revisions to get greenpois0n working as it should for 4.1; well RC5 and the latest RC5_2 are still buggy like a roach-infested hobo shed. You think geohot is the irresponsible Maverick? Greenpois0n is so crudely assembled that it did not even bother to include activation bundles, you are pretty screwed if you restored a locked phone to default before trying GP. (Solutions are available, read on)

There are plenty of tutorials out there, however I am going to provide my workflow that is least likely to have many hiccups that you might come across otherwise (mainly the issues with activation and the utterly broken Cydia loader in both versions) This also allows for offline operation in case you don't have access to data service or wifi.

1. Turn on your iPhone, connect it to your computer, back up everything in iTunes just in case. (nothing sould be lost unless you screwed up massively)
2. Close iTunes, shut down iPhone by holding the Sleep button and slide the red slider as it appears. 
3. Run redsn0w 0.96rc8, choose the factory 4.21 firmware for your device, follow the instructions and choose "Install Cydia" when prompted. For 3Gs unlockers only: You can choose "install iPad baseband" at the same time to streamline the process.
4. Run redsn0w again as in step 3 however choose "boot tethered". 
5. You should enter a fully jailbroken state, run Cydia to initialize it, check other system applications like Safari and make sure everything is working before turning the phone off again. Don't bother downloading any packages yet, we can leave this for later. 
6. Run greenpois0n RC5, follow the instructions. Note that there is a 5 second countdown at the start for "getting ready", this can be somewhat confusing if you become used to redsn0w's DFU routines. 
7. Keep the Home button pressed the whole time even after it says "complete", your iPhone should boot up in verbose mode in a minute, simply watch and you should be able to see the boot animation pretty soon.
8. The phone will turn off automatically when everything is done; simply turn on the phone again to enjoy the benefits of untethered JB.

• Whenever errors come up or the phone gets stuck at any step for more than 5min in verbose mode, simply force power off by holding Sleep+Home for a few seconds and start over. It actually happens more often than thought so don't panic, just keep trying and it will work eventually. In the worst case you can always use trusty redsn0w to boot tethered and start over from step 6.
• Unlike limera1n, RC5 does not contain any activation bundles. If you are having trouble getting past the activation screen, you will have to run redsn0w 0.97beta6 to hacktivate. The usual precautions of hactivating still apply and it is always better to activate using the right carrier's SIM.
• RC5 is Mac-only and will fail within virtual machines or hackintosh. RC5_2 is said to work with VM at least however I still recommend getting hold of a Mac before wasting your own time due to pod2g's own impotency.

Mobile Network 101 Finale

Back to the question I asked at the beginning, why are the pre-4th generation iPhones no better off than a cheap Nokia in New Zealand?

The answer is simple: When the iPhone was first sold in NZ, Vodafone was the only carrier with a GSM service so Apple had no alternatives. However, iPhone was designed for AT&T's 850MHz 3G frequency instead of the European 900MHz that Vodafone uses. While the older iPhone models are able to get 3G service in urban areas where 2100MHz masts are the mainstream, they are out of luck in less populated places as their phones will only get 2G/GSM signal. Ironically XT had the right frequency nationwide, however Telecom opted to offer iPhones through its subsidiary Gen-i only. 

The same issue is not limited to one brand. Motorola A855 or Sholes came in several versions that are nearly identical except for the radio module. The GSM/WCDMA version is called the MILESTONE, which is further divided into European (900/2100), Commonwealth (850/900/2100) and North American (850/1900) flavours, causing much confusion when users move across national boundaries; and the DROID line is CDMA2000 only and without a card slot, making them effectively unusable outside the US, unless you have a friend of a friend to unofficially register your phone with a non-US carrier.

Sometimes it is harder to determine if a certain phone is XT-compatible since 850 and 900 versions may be offered under the same model/part number. A friend working with parallel imported handsets often had to literally sail out, with his newly arrived stock, to a spot in Hauraki Gulf that he knew has only 850MHz coverage.It may sound ridiculous but there are no other ways to tell.

Apple has certainly learned something and the iPhone 4 is given a pent-band 3G baseband; theoretically it should work in any place with some form of WCDMA service.(The FCC documents included a 800MHz band however Apple choose not advertise on this, probably because there are not many 800MHz networks out there) iPhone for CDMA2000 is also due to be released shortly. Motorola has also recently introduced a range of Global phones with both GSM, WCDMA and CDMA2000 hardware, however these phones are programmed with a new type of SIM lock not to work with GSM carriers in the USA while they work without restrictions elsewhere.

Nevertheless, Blackberry has been selling truly global phones for many years so it must have never been a major technological hurdle to combine several radios in one device. The true motivation lies in the lucrative practice of carrier subsidy.

My conclusions from the history of mobile telephony

• Like all other forms of infrastructure such as electricity and railway, mobile networks are costly to deploy and convenience decisions often lead to many headaches later. Example: Telecom took the hard pill in giving up CDMA2000 altogether，however many telcos elsewhere are still spending billions of dollars every year to expand their present CDMA2000 network and upgrading them to EV-DO Ver.B for commercial reasons with the full knowledge that the system is minimally compatible with successor standards and in a way, already obsolete.

• Homogeneity created through monopoly is bad, too much diversity is worse.

• Conforming to the general patterns in industrialisation, latecomers often have considerable advantage since they are not already committed to maintain legacy support. There are many examples: Japan, once they got over the general ineptitude for much of the 2G era, successfully developed a global standard and currently has several of the best and most profitable 3G netoworks world-wide.

• Theoretically superior technology does not always lead to better results. Example: Telecom's XT is definitely faster than Vodafone's older UMTS stations, however XT is still struggling to catch up with its own precedents in terms of coverage and reliability, the two essential criteria of any good mobile service that appears to have been overlooked in the last 10 years. 

• Lysenko may have been dead for several decades, his spirit still lives on as purely scientific matters are often swayed by political and/or ideological influences. The same farce is ongoing with the entire WiMAX vs. LTE debate.

• Tanenbaum noted that public interest (and investment) in scientific advancements usually arrive in waves, hence the evolution is more or less stochastic. Example: 3G was almost killed off following the .com bubble, and it is still struggling to return a profit amid the recent recession.

A lot of poorly developed science remained alive and well through pure luck, while the most ingenious inventions may easily slip into oblivion if it was born around the wrong time.

By the way, his book Computer Networks is an essential read for those with further interests in this area.

Mobile Network 101 Part 3

In the beginning, Mobiles networks acted just like the wired phone system however over the air. Yet because each base station had limited capacity, it is not practical to maintain dialup-esque uninterrupted data sessions over analogue lines as it uses frequencies badly needed by everybody else. 

Soon it is found that some bands reserved to control messages can be re-used to send small packets of data, namely 160 latin characters of text. By setting up separate facilities called Short Message Service Centre (SMSC) to route packets, the service could be put into use with little overhead to the network.

The design proved to be simple yet very efficient;similar protocols were developed for most rival standards such as D-AMPS and CDMA. However just as SMS went viral worldwide, US carriers were unwilling or uninterested in co-ordinating SMSCs that allow text messages to be transferred between different networks. Such handicap resulted in a persistent lack of reliable SMS service and consumer interest in north America, leading to third-party services such as BIS that works independently across all networks. Texting between carriers is no longer an issue in US(quirks do remain, such as non-latin messages routinely gets corrupted should they cross network barriers), SMS is often not a regular service for mobile services but a paid add-on.

For a while, SMS was the only method of data transmission over GSM networks. People even wrote protocols to control remote devices via SMS. Fortunately, it did not take long before someone realised that a packet-based layer would be placed alongside voice in the digitised radio. By the time GPRS standard has stablised, it is capable of 80kbps download and 20bps upload, faster than dial-up on copper wire. However to achieve this speed, five concurrent TDMA timeslots must be used, hogging up a large portion of scarce network capacity. To furthur increase bandwidth, the need for new technology could not be any more obvious.

Numerous submissions were made, and the winner turned out to be a surprise to everybody. NTT DoCoMo's W-CDMA, a hybrid protocol using a CDMA air interface for capacity, while preserving the GSM core network to minimise transition costs and allow handsets to move seamlessly between 2G to 3G. Bearing in mind that Japan never had any commercial GSM service, we could only assume that NTT designed W-CDMA (soon to be known as UMTS), to be a global standard.

Legacy support was proven in its value such as in case of Vodafone NZ, which operates both WCDMA and GSM network. The latter is available in case the former fails. Whereas Telecom runs to incompatible standards (XT and CDMA2000), disruptions in XT service turned out to be a major flop.

CDMA was designed to be data-compatible from ground up. It underwent its own evolution into CDMA2000, and became fully 3G with the EV-DO extension, which happened before any other standards were formed. While CDMA2000 uses a much smaller channel which means it hogs less frequency, the smaller bandwidth meant that there is little room for expansion, and voice call cannot exist simutaneously with an active data session. 

3G was, shortly before the millennium, touted as the greatest thing that was ever invented since the lightbulb and sliced bread to "change the way we live forever". National authorities put 3G frequencies for auction and netted billions of dollars. However, the .com bubble promptly went burst thereafter and the hype suddenly died away. For many years, 3G was considered nothing more than combination of gimmicks like video calling; nobody took it seriously. 

Some of the players like Nortel never recovered from the damage and went out of business in another bad cycle. With the rollout of 4G and 4G-ish networks imminent, most operators have so far failed to recover their cost from the entire 3G fiasco.

One of the main reason was that few handsets were truly taking the advantage of 3G before 2007. Yes, I am talking about the iPhone. Before that, most phones are optimised for GPRS: messages were text only and browsers only return stripped down WAP pages. We all dislike iPhone for many reasons, but it is truly the game changer as everybody realised that how much rich media they could provide on people's everyday carry.

The slow transition to 3G is accompanied by the decline of two 2G-era giants: RIM and Nokia. I will write more about them in another post.

If it was not for the recession, three independent standards would have played out for 4G: LTE for the GSM/UMTS camp, UMB for CDMA2000 and WiMAX as an extended 802.11 protocol. Qualcomm, reacting to not-so-favourable financial conditions, decided to ditch UMB and concentrate on allowing present CDMA2000 networks to migrate to LTE.

Right now, most 3G carriers are planning for LTE while brading their HSPA+ compatible networks as 4G in all advertising material to attract attention. WiMAX has been deployed in a few places, however it's future as a major standard remains unclear.

Gantz Live Action Movie

Thanks to personal circumstances and endless piles of stuff from work, I have epically missed all the movies I was supposed to see since the start of the break. Well, I am not going to miss this one. The few pre-release reviews I have read has been generally positive. Although I have a few doubts about the cast, the trailers look pretty delish.



Gantz is probably the most realistic manga I have read. Not only is it extremely graphic and blasphemous, but also for the lack of voyeuristic/philosophical nonsense that seems to be the norm today.

Most people suffer more or less from the Pygmalion Syndrome where they fall in love with their creations and it becomes too hard for them to let go. Oku, however, has taken a rare kind of apathy in Gantz. I mean, his characters may not be very likable, but which other author kills 90% of the main cast in two chapters of a single story arc that is not even halfway into the plot?

The anime adaptation shared a lot of similarities with Fullmetal Alchemist, with the weekly episodes progressing too fast on the storyline, eventually getting to a point that it runs out of material from the still ongoing manga. Both productions decided to supply original story to finish off the season. This is where the Gantz failed as the new segments were badly written and stripped of the realistic aura. Although FMA's divergence from the original was much better executed and received, a new anime had been made later to recreate the story as intended by the author.I seriously look forward to another Gantz anime; in the meantime the movie will help to fix my cravings.

My $0.02 on the CIE vs. NCEA debate

I was in Year 10 when the government pulled the plug on Bursary and my school seniors back then were the first hatch of guinea pigs fed to the burgeoning monster called NCEA. The principal of the school I went to at the time was one of the chief architect of NCEA. The other high school in the area up the road reacted by offering Cambridge International Examinations, to which the chief architect (who unsurprisingly works for NZQA now) made some rather personal and unpleasant attacks in front of the entire school during an assembly. Although NCEA formally starts at Year 11, we were given plenty of mock assessments in order to prepare for the real deal.

With a twist of fate, I ended up in the other school and took up CIE for the next three years. Hence I feel qualified to speak for the pros and cons of both.

One persistent criticism of NCEA from parents is that it is "too easy" compared to other "tried and true" systems. This is more of a misconception. Well, every system has loopholes that can be exploited to make academic load as light as possible without compromising an UE. The curriculum is actually similar and CIE is hardly more advanced than NCEA in terms of content.

Like this editorial have judged correctly, the consistency issues NCEA had has largely been fixed. Schools resent NCEA because of the sheer amount of internal assessments to manage and process. The issue is more acute in schools offering alternatives to NCEA since two details of staff must be maintained.(Initially teachers taught both, however it was soon found to be unpractical)

A more serious problem is that once the student population start going to separate sets of classes, they effectively split into two cliques, with the NCEA kids accepting some baseless inferiority. Some subjects such as art or PE maybe taught in combined classes, where the division turned into open hostility as the two groups blame each other whenever something went wrong. The bipolar-ness even seems to take precedence over the usual socio-economic or lingo-ethnic lines.

On the other hand, the real risk of taking CIE is the development of bad studying habits. Since everything that matters is this one big exam at the end of the year, it is not too hard to slack off for most of the time. Once at university, many papers have a significant proportion of marks allocated to in-course assessments, which took me almost two years to actually adjust to. 

Putting things in context, the early- and mid-noughties were such a good time when the economies were soaring, the All Blacks seemed invincible and Sister Helen ruled the nation with a firm hand. Republicanism was also flying high. The shift to NCEA happened concurrently with the vote in Parliament to abolish rights to appeal to the Privy council, not a coincidence. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why Auckland Grammar, the most reactionary of public schools out there, to ditch the blighted national standard, with many whitebread high schools rallying under the same banner.

V1, V2

Hello again my crippled blog. Life has recently become very hectic with day jobs taking a larger cut of my time than expected and few other things keep holding me up. Exactly two week ago I pledged to update this blog more often, well...

Partly because Part 3 of my mobile network series is taking much longer as I have underestimated the amount of research. Besides, I have been distracted with the temporary ownership of an iPhone 4 for which I took the advantage of carrier subsidy to buy as a Christmas gift for my dear father.

I have had ample opportunity to fiddle with other people's iPhones before which were not all that impressive: The plastic chassis feel cheap, the screen is mediocre and iTunes is a pain to use. The iPad failed to please me the same way with its general lack in productivity features, which even MacFags do admit.

You see, the smoothness of iOS is often achieved through deception. Deliberately disabling multitasking is one thing, for Apple is a clever social engineer to make things appear better than they really are. For example, Safari on the iPhone only render the visible portion of the active tab plus a very small adjacent area to reduce the processing overhead. If you scroll too fast you will be greeted with blank areas cleverly disguised as transparency layers before the system catches up. The interface also tricks people into suspending processes rather than properly killing them, resulting in a seemingly fast launch time when the same process is called again.

However the iPhone 4 is actually quite agreeable. The slim construction of double glass panels and external antennas, despite its susceptibilities to breakage and attenuation, is quite pleasing to sight and feels substantial in your hands. The much-hyped retina screen is also pretty nice, even for someone already accustomed to a high quality screen on the Milestone. Apple have chosen the right resolution that existing apps that were smart enough to uemploy vector graphics can be scaled up without any intervention.

Taiko no Tatsujin looked so good that I almost thought it was developed natively for 960x640

The added RAM helps to make multitasking possible without sacrificing responsiveness. And the camera deserves special mention too for being exceptional. in such a small package. While I did not regret giving it away, I am looking for a locked 32GB one for entertainment. Overall, it is a glorified and augmented iPod Touch rather than a communication device, for I cannot bear the lack of physical keyboard, notification light and interchangeable batteries found on every other phone.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the history of Apple shows clear continuity from Day 1 while Microsoft's products were often refreshed to the point that it no longer resemble their ancestors. The latest Macs still have some of the quirks of Apple II where critical system timings were taken directly from the bus clock, so binaries not complied with such systems will fail to execute.

The present iOS vs. Android race is an exact duplication of the old PC vs. Mac rivalry. Apple, by controlling the range of hardware, can effectively control the user experience, while their more open opponents must deal with all sorts of segmentation and compatibility issue.

To better explain this, let's look at a recent example. Everybody loves Angry Birds however the initial Android release was unplayable for most people. Simply because with iPhone there are only two hardware branches and one or two OS to maintain, while Android comes in at least three versions, a variety of screen resolutions and a continuum of processing power, which is something that developers, having been spoiled by the iPhone, cannot no longer cope with.

BTW, this game, along with many others, are free for Android but paid in the App Store...Hint hint.

The same issue plagues most apps ported from iOS, where it works poorly with handsets of limited hardware.

This, however, still leaves one question to be answered: Does Apple make people stupid, or are stupid people attracted to Apple?

The answer is, it does not matter, for there is a demon darker than coal trapped in every iDevice. BlendTec has proof.

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Blogger Stats has not been working for some time and I have put it down to the ineptitude of Google's admins (blogspot.com has been on the downhill road since the takeover by Google), however a recent visit to the message board revealed that the function simply stopped working with Firefox, or any gecko-based browser altogether. Google Analytics, the background service that powers Blogger Stats, are also reported to have many issues with Firefox, including some reports that it does not register visits via Firefox at all. After many years of mutual support, the rift between Google and Mozilla is finally beginning to show.

The period from 2001 to 2005, following the first Browser War, are the dark days of the web with the lamentable Internet Explorer 6.0 dominating the market with only two minor update in two years. Alternatives were available however since most sites are written to support IE, the average layperson are unlikely to use it. 

Fortunately the stagnation did not last forever; Firefox came out with Gecko, a brand new, standardised rendering engine, a smooth interface with tab browsing and much better security features. While its market share was never beyond the 30% mark, the real change brought along my Firefox is the renewed competition of development within the browser market. 

I thought that Firefox was the forefront of web standardisation however this seems to be no longer the case, and I have similar personal experiences where a KHTML page I authored refused to be rendered correctly in Firefox; Trident renders it correctly only 50% of time however Webkit i.e. Chrome and Safari rendered it without a hitch. I ended up making static versions of the affected pages with a redirection script, which is easier said than done since every browser pretends to be Mozilla. 

As for the software itself, it has become increasingly bloated and crash-prone from 3.6 onwards (hence the author is still staying on 3.5 for the remainder of its support lifetime), nor is the 4.0 beta anywhere near ready. Once the developers start to embrace Chrome en masse, there is little advantage left for Firefox. 

Unlike Microsoft which has virtually bottomless resources to promote their browser, Firefox had to enter into an agreement with Google which trades search traffic for financing. While this income has allowed Mozilla to keep up the fight in the darkest of days, it is getting less secure because of the inherent conflict of interest.

Finally compared to Opera which successfully captured the niche market of mobile web browsing, Firefox was too dependent on mainstream x86 platforms; Camino was hit hard when Apple defected to x86 and was never really completed, while Fennec is still stuck in beta at the time of writing. 

A losing battle from the beginning

With a sad note, I must say that Firefox is losing on all fronts and shall fade away within five years just like its Netscape fathers, not for its own wrongs but a combination of complacency, lack of focus and sheer bad luck. 

LOL

Never been a fan of U2 at any time, however one must appreciate Bono's guts for appearing in a video that plays satire on the fundamental hypocrisy of showbiz.

Shtarker: Too bad about all the dead movie stars.

Siegfried: Yes. What will we do without their razor-sharp political advice.

And with late happy turkey day to everybody:D

Mobile Network 101 Part 2

In an ideal world, there should be a sensible meeting of people where standards are designed and implemented internationally.However the world is not ideal as we know it, and mobile technology was no exception.

Back in the analogue days, US first came up with AMPS, a simple FDMA (refer to part  1 in case you are getting lost here) system on 800MHz FM band; Japan and the UK was soon to follow suit, however because of regulatory limitations they had to use a different variety on the 900MHz band. Continental Europe, however, went into a frenzy of devising their own national standards, none of which turned out to be satisfactory or economically viable after a few years.

Learning from their blunders, European telcos decided to poll their effort together to create a common standard. The collaboration was initially named Groupe Spécial Mobile, however the acronym GSM soon conflated with the term Global System for Mobile. GSM was designed from the drawing pad to be fully digital, modular, and capable of operating on several different frequency bands to suit national regulations. One major point that had to be mentioned separately is the invention of the SIM card, which allows the user to move his number from one phone to another with ease.

People of the present age often take SIM cards for granted, and indeed in New Zealand over 70% of mobile subscribers are using a prepaid SIM. Nonetheless, SIM card is actually a more recent invention. Back in the days when telecommunication was though to be of natural monopoly and AT&T decided what colour is your phone going to be, it is no big surprise that phones are sold hard-wired to a certain network. In Europe, however, many countries have laws in place prohibiting blatant bundling of service with a product. With the technology standardised between countries, there is no longer any excuse to lock users in. SIM cards also allowed people to change their phones more frequently so the manufacturers are actually quite happy with it.

Hence two very different business models developed on two shores of the Atlantic: American carriers grant heavy subsidy for handsets, often offering them free of charge to lure customers into signing a lucrative contract; even GSM phones are often sold locked to a specific network, even after the initial contract has expired. In Europe, most SIM cards are prepaid and carrier locks are virtually unheard of until, you guessed right, until Steve Jobs decided to shove the American way of life down everyone's throat. 

Back then when GSM was rapidly expanding, AMPS evolved very slowly. The IS-54 standard made the internal handling of calls digital to triple cell capacity, while remaining compatible to the older standard externally for a smooth transition. The subsequent IS-136 standard is fully digital, however it came too late and GSM became the effective global standard.

The future of the AMPS family was sealed when a domestic foe appeared. A start-up company in California called Qualcomm pushed digigently for their radically different and innovative CDMA technology. Unlike GSM or AMPS, CDMA does not require a frequency switch during a handover process, resulting in a much "softer" transfer that nearly always goes unnoticed and rarely dropped. While GSM and AMPS are both subject to the limitations of TDM encoding, GSM was being continually developed to minimise any issue but AMPS lacked the momentum, not to mention it was not designed to handle frequent handoffs in the first place. Two major carriers, namely Sprint and Verizon Wireless, embraced CDMA because SIM card (correct term for CDMA is actually is RIM) is not mandatory, allowing the contract-based status quo.

Subsequently AMPS went into a slow but steady decline; service has been stopped in most countries by 2006. To this date only a few networks remain, all of which are in remote regions where the upgrade cost is prohibitive.

The same pattern of change played out in most parts of the world except in Japan, where the AMPS system was simplified to become PDC, which is specialised for the higher user density found in Japan. Because PDC allowed handsets to have lower transmission power, tiny handsets unimaginable elsewhere can be made. Manufacturers became obsessed with making even smaller units, culminating in the PHS system where all cells are microcells covering a radius of less than a kilometer. The domestic market flourished, while the PHS system was exported to gain a huge following in large cities like Taipei and Rio. Notwithstanding their relative success, the Japanese mobile industry became disconnected with the rest of the world for years, overlapping much of the lost decade.

In this chapter above I tried to summarise the development from 1G (analogue voice) to 2G (digital voice), the next chapter will devoted to the entire 3G fiasco of which the effects are still being felt today.

Sony PRS-350 Impressions

Back to the beginning of 2010, Kindle was the only affordable e-reader of acceptable quality; other offering were either cheap n'nasty or horrendously expensive. Sony's line of e-readers had a mixed reception: the build and system are both excellent, however their screens had a really bad glare issue due to the extra layer of glass where the digitiser is.

A recent trip to SonyStyle cleared up much of my prejudice against Sony e-readers. The latest PRS-350 is especially lovely, with a streamlined aluminium body, beautiful screen and a much improved touch panel that does not glare much if at all.

I tend to speak very positively of Amazon, nonetheless I do feel that they were cutting corners with the Kindle 3 to keep their margins. Omitting a few vestigial bits like accelerometer and GPS can be forgiven, however the plastic chassis had been causing many issues including warped units and broken screens. PRS-350, however, is mainly slimmed down in functionality with no wireless connection and very limited choice of font sizes and no memory card slots.

The relative success of the Kindle is based on Amazon's present customer base, as well as the device's ability to please both ends of the user spectrum, namely from computer illiterate soccer-moms (over the air purchase, delivery and file conversion) to geek major (drag and drop file management, crude system with many possible hacks), while on the usability front it is actually falling behind other companies who are catching up very rapidly. With the glare issue fixed, Sony is in a good position to capture the more mainstream users who is looking for a balanced option.

Verdict

Pros

• Excellent construction, better than the Kindle 3
• Small size, light weight
• Decent touchscreen operation
• Easy to use, responsive system
• ePub Support
• PDF reflow

Cons

• Lack of wireless connectivity
• Limited customisations and community support
• Need a computer to manage books

P.S. Over the weekend, B&H had a deal on Sony e-readers, with PRS-350 priced at US$119.99（approx. NZ$156, around NZ$200 with international shipping). Having just spent some money on booze and canned pineapples, I hesitated on placing an order. However I soon regretted as the price went up to $149.99, much less attractive.

It is available from official channels for $299.95 including GST. You can check it out hands-on at your local Sony outlets. To compare the size of popular e-readers, click here.

October Political Commentary (3): The Origins of Anand Satyanand

Mutyala Satyanand was born in Fuji to second generation immigrant family who descended from indentured laborers from India.  At the age of 14 he left Fiji to attend high school in Wanganui. A few years later Mutyala was admitted to Otago Medical School, then graduated with an MbChB. Intending to leave for Fiji after his education but his best plans were disrupted by World War II. He stayed on before ultimately deciding to stay and open his own practice in Auckland, where he pioneered what is later known as sports medicine, treating rugby players, cricketers and jockeys of their ailments.

He married a Fijian-Indian Nurse from Suva and started a family. Their son Anand grew up in the eastern suburbs of Auckland, went to Sacred Heart College and, having failed to gain admittance to Otago Med School, took up law back in Auckland and became a lawyer. Slowly he rose to the top as a fair and just man of law by the people. Having worked with both Labour and National, he is the ideal material for his current office.

However, what kind of people is Sir Anand? He belongs to the small class of what I would call the Minority Ascendancy, who are self-made men and women who had worked through the ladders of social hierarchy with their own might. like the AhChee family.(Old enough to remember Georgie Pie? The AhChees started it.)
The Ascendancy always had a ambiguous attitude to their culture identity, i.e. they are partly proud of and partly embarrassed by their origins, and even more aware that they are, ultimately, different to the majority. The social rift back in Fiji runs neatly along lines of ethnicity and religion, while the late Dr Saty would consider himself more Indian, Sir Anand would have tried hard to define himself for the 66 odd years he lived. These are the people of no culture barriers, however these are also the people of nowhere.

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What I thought would be a series of objective informational post ended up being another piece of self-centered reflections and perhaps rant; I promise that the next post will be objecive to the extreme and totally free of personal opinion:)

And it should have been "November" in the title anyway. I ran out of time and energy to write due to exams. In the past two weeks I seriously considered to remove the first two posts because I may never finish the third. Nevertheless, I decided to hold on and finally finished this mini-series. Hence I am a better person, take that.

P.S.Improvements to these posts will be made piece by piece so come back once in a while to see the updated versions.

Review: Kindle DX Second Generation

All information is valid as of Oct.14 2010, prices are quoted in USD unless explicitly stated.

I am serious, and don't call me iPad

Finally it is here. I paid for my Kindle DX over a month ago and waited forever for it to arrive at my agent in the USA, and the trip from eastern US to Godzone only took 10 days.

Not many people own a e-reader here, less so for a Kindle DX. After my brief encounter with a half-crippled Kindle 2 earlier this year, I have always been tempted to get its bigger brother. Back then it costed over $500 and definitely out of my radar; now with many competitors out in the market, Amazon has quietly lowered their prices (often to comical effects, since for a number of days people were trying to sell used Kindles for more than new ones) and the DX is suddently a lot more affordable.

I was going to order the DX Graphite but decided against it in the last minute for several reasons:

• Vodafone NZ signed with Amazon in August to provide 3G service for Kindle over their well-established WCDMA network. The current versions of Kindle DX relies on the CDMA2000 standard which does not exist locally, however given the highly modular design of the device it would not take them very long to release a WCDMA model for New Zealand. Although the Kiwi dollar is at a historic high point, $379 is still no small sum and I could have spent it on many other things I need than want.
• The graphite edition boasts a superior display with 50% more contrast, however pricing policy suggests otherwise with the older generation only $20 less. A friend was kind enough to show me her latest acquisition and it made my mind: Black seems to be a tad richer compared to the Kindle 2, but I could not help but suspect that a lot of the visual improvements came from the black chassis, which has a better contrast with the white (actually gray) blanks. Clearly the new screen is nothing worth raving about nor is it worth the prenium price tag.

In the end the compormise was achieved on a factory refurbished Kindle DX, which is substantially more affordable at $289 (when I made the purchase, price has since dropped to $269) and carries the same warranty. It had to be shipped to a US address for sure, and thankfully the process was smooth except for the extended waiting period, which I could not understand until I had the package in my hands.

A bunch of wussies I must say. If Li-ion batteries are safe enough to be carried on a flight, I see no reason why they are unfit for freight.

First Impression and Ergonomics

The Kindle DX is big, bigger than one of my laptops. It is also much heavier than the 6in variant and not intended for prolonged reading held in a single hand. The best reading posture is actually to brace it with your left arm while using your own torso to support its weight, use your left hand in place for the large buttons while leaving your right hand free to manipulate the keyboard.

The control buttons are only found on the right hand side, which is fine with me. Sorry to left handed people, your own option is to turn the device unside-down and the pages will automatically flip 180 degrees to resume reading.

To maximise the screen area, the keyboard has been pressed to a tiny row which results in a top-heavy configuration that wants to capsize as soon as you attempt to type with both hands.The keyboard is usable with some support, however not comfortable enough to type long notes or write emails. The smaller Kindles has bigger keys and are more balanced for typing. The 5-d joystick is also a little fiddly and I would prefer the flat d-pad on the latest Kindle 3.

Reading on Kindle DX

Ebooks:

The picture shows the smallest font size which is similar to your standard paperback books. Reading is pretty much similar to Kindle 2, except more words fit per screen and the "Next Page" button is going to be needed a lot less frequently. Screen refresh time is on par with the smaller kindles which is very impressive considering the screen is more than twice the size.

Project Gutenberg now publish most books in specific Kindle format, often complete with illustrations to make it more like reading a real book, although illustrations does work always fill the page as intended by the creators. 

PDF:

PDF fits very well across the page and is rendered faithfully. Sometimes the words may appear a little faint so you will need good lighting to see better. 

There is also a crude zoom and pan function which makes the inevitable finer print easier to read; however it is easier to turn the device 90 degrees and read in landscape. Unlike e-readers of other brands, PDF reflow is not yet supported and you are better off jotting down notes on a piece of paper.

Manga:

The screen has more an enough grayscale for manga or comic if you don't mind monochrome. I use Mangle to resize and convert image files to Kindle-friendly sizes. The major let down is the system, where it often takes several seconds to load the next page or images may simply turn up corrupted. Don't rely on it for your everyday manga reading, however it provides a decent variation to reading words.

Other Features

Most features I remembered from the Kindle 2 are still firmly in place, including the web browser and text-to-speech functionalities. A recent system update added the sorely needed function of organising books into "collections" so the days of browsing 50 pages of catalogue to find a page is a thing of the past. If you weren't fussy about warranty claims, there are plenty of documentation on various hacks and mods to do wonderful things with your kindle: Maybe you want to tether network over USB, run Busybox or even a full Linux distro? They are all possible.

Accessories

Like Kindle 2, Kindle DX is a minimalist device, all you need is a micro-B type USB cable to charge and access the device. Nevertheless, Amazon did issue a few pieces of accessories; there are also a vast range of offerings from other brands to choose from.

The official Kindle 2 charger, not withstanding its tiny size it has excellent specs (100-240V input, 4.9V 850mA output). The world has certainly moved on from the era of wall warts, and MacFags will be pleased to know that these chargers will handle Apple products quite nicely - once less charger to carry.

The Amazon case, unfortunately, is a different (and depressing) story. It has two metal hinges to secure the device and cause cracks (which often renders the screen useless) over time or instantly in case of blunt force damage. Avoid them, at least the older iterations with straight hinges, and get a third-party soft case instead, preferably with a reading light so you will be able to read when your loved ones are fast asleep. On the other hand, clip-on reading lights of any origin work pretty well with the kindle DX with its wide margins for attachment.

Because the refurbished items does not come with a charger, I picked up VanGoddy's Kindle DX accessory package which include a well made silicon sleeve(shown in a previous picture), car charger and wall charger with USB cable; good deal for $24.85.

As a generally messy person and wannabe scientist, I also bought Octovo's spandex splash proof case. It is a cumbersome affair and has a few problems such as the direction key fails to line up with the printed markers on the outside. But it is still a handy case for the purpose. The black colour also solves some of the contrast problems reading in bright light.

Many accessories are less useful, for example, screen protector film is a waste of time and defeats the purpose of having a readable screen under direct sunlight, and do you really need a docking station to keep your kindle upright while charging?

Verdict

Unlike its little brother, Kindle DX is a somewhat overpriced product that serves a more dedicated market, namely high-throughput readers and researchers who read a lot of articles in PDF format. it is not intended to be maximally portable and you probably won't fancy carrying it with you on a daily basis. If you read a lot of PDF files and/or find the generic e-readers too small for your needs, jump at it, other wise don't bother.

At this moment the Kindle 3, especially the wifi-only version remains the best deal in the e-reader market. With a little extra you can grab the 3G version for over-the-air delivery and free web access. If you weren't in a hurry, you can always wait for Amazon to release a new model that works in NZ.

October Political Commentary (2): Reserve Power

Nowadays people are inclined to believe that democracy is for the people and by the people, yet the earlier forms of democracy has always been a tool of the elites against the monarchy and the general population. (See Magna Carta) As a part of deal, the head of state retained rights to veto certain bills and (more in a ceremonial sense) dissolve the parliament.

Franchise was gradually extended from the aristocracy to the landed gentry, then to every tax-paying man and finally every able-minded adult. Strangely back then many liberal politicians opposed the idea of universal (male franchise), particularly in France, because their fears that the uneducated masses are uncapable of exercising political power and may, in their worse fear, elect a royalist that will end their privileged position once and for all. At the same time, the power of the monarchy was constantly eroded by the state. There is a partticularly sharp decline since the Napoleonic Wars when the Georges might have had some influence on governments, Queen Victoria delibrately refrained from politics during her later life, and the underprepared Uncle Edward was more interested in diplomacy than domestic affairs. Prime Minister could go as far as requesting the head of Balmoral castle to appoint more Peers to the House of Lords in order to pass certain laws. The only king to have rebelled against the role of glorified rubber stamp is Edward VII, and the government promptly got rid of him. (Wallis Simpson is just an excuse, they could have used his sympathy to facism or any other excuse on a later date)

Constitutional Monarchy implies that the country is ultimately governed by a constitution, of which New Zealand is definitely lacking. Apart from the ceremonial roles generally afforded to the Queen, the functions of Governor-General include:

• Officially dissolve and open the parliament at the request of the Government, as well as appointing ministers including the PM
• Grant Royal Assent to new laws.

By convention the Governor-General acts at the advice (emphemism for explicit instructions) of the ruling government, nevertheless he is not bound by any rule to obey. Such incident were known as "constitutional crises" where nobody knows what to do.

There is also the problem of overlapping between the legislative and executive wing in the Westminster system. In other words, the government consists of serving MPs and nearly always control the parliament. The situation is even more extreme in NZ without an upper house to check the power of proportionally elected representatives. Hence the reserve power is at the same time a good measure and equally useless.

Overall, the reserve power at the hands of the Governor-General is vague and limited at best.  The viceregal role seems to be entirely vestigial and out of place. I bet many of us were not even aware of our current Governor-General before the debate erupted.

So, who is Anand Satyanand?

T.B.C.

October Political Commentary (1): Birthright or not?

The recent controversy initiated by Paul Henry's comment of whether Sir Anand Satyanand "is a New Zealander", together with the fallout from this seemingly trivial comment, prompted me to write this rather reactionary commentary.

Those of you who know me should be aware that TV watching is not a normal part of my life, however I do have a liking for Paul Henry who, like Paul Holmes, has the old fashioned quality of speaking whatever their heart says. This is especially precious in today's increasingly phlegmatic society filled with overt political correctness. Still, sometime one has to admit that many broadcasters are ill-informed about the political status of New Zealand, which in itself is a huge puddle of muddy water.

Let's hope that I shall not lose momentum while writing this series. I will modify completed sections heavily so do expect to find differences over time.

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Prior to any meaningful discussion on the complex topic, we must first review Being my usual lazy self, I choose to present a modified section stolen from Wikipedia:
"As the sovereign is shared equally with 15 other independent countries in a form of personal union and resides predominantly in her oldest realm, the United Kingdom, she, on the advice of her prime minister only,appoints the governor general to carry out most of her constitutional and ceremonial duties for an unfixed period of time—known as serving At Her Majesty's pleasure—though five years is the normal convention. Once in office, these individuals maintain direct contact with the Queen, wherever she may be at the time."

In Simple English, Govern-General is a government-appointed person who acts as the Queen's stunt in her distant lands. The exact role of the regent in a constitutional monarchy will be better discussed in its own chapter. Meanwhile, I have summarised the history of the post in New Zealand:

• There had been 35 past Governors-General under various titles.
• Most of the early ones came from the mother country as professional administrators or later, retirees from various public or military offices. The first "Kiwi" Governor-General is probably Lord Freyberg, who was born in England and moved to New Zealand at  the age of two. The last one to have born in Britain was Bernard Fergusson, a former army brigadier whose father and two grandfathers had all served on the same post in the past. 
• Every Governor-General since Arthur Porritt are all born in New Zealand except Sir David Bettie who was born in Sydney; nevertheless Arthur Porritt had close ties to the British Royal House during his medical practice and is probably closer to his precedents than it appears.
• Most people mentioned here are high-class professionals such as doctors, lawyers, officers, etc.
• Much to the point John Key made during the interview where all hell broke loose, it is usually unwise to appoint a career politician to the role of Governor-General, obviously because their previous alignment with a certain ideology is simply not suited to the non-partisan nature of our head of state. Hence I find the notion of former legislators becoming the Governor rather bizarre. The most recent example has to be Sir Keith Holyoake, who was made the Queen's representative while serving as a government minister and MP. Guess who did it? Muldoon.  
• Overall, there is no written eligibilities for this job, and in the historical context, nativism is only a recent feature yet it seems to become the accepted norm. 

This is in stark contrast to Canada, which is a similar bi-cultural society. The established tradition is to rotate between Anglo and Québécois candidates as a sign of fairness. Nevertheless the last two Governors General appointed by Liberal governments were both foreign-born females of humble upbringing.

This concludes the mini-discussion on the history of the office. Next post will focus on its various functions.

To be continued.

Daily Rumbling

It is scary to think that there is only three more weeks to the end of the semester and my undergraduate courses. Not to mention I have heaps of assignments due before the exams. Although the recent test results revealed a rather alarming lack of improvement, I think I will do better than my last 5 semesters combined.

Next year I will probably do BSc Hons, if my exam results convince the study committee to let me in. I went through the list of available projects and could not decide between 18 equally interesting topics. The use of RNAi to treat neurological disorders seems quote promising, so is the isolation of anti-necrotic proteins in maggots. Even if I don't get in, I will probably carry on with BioMedSci and find out whether I am meant to work for science.

Despite the exams looming on the horizon, I have applied and got a new part-time job. It is not for the money, but just to keep myself in contact with people while having nothing planned for the summer.

Out of the cave aye ;-)

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Onto happy memories:

On Tuesday I was made an honourary member of World Jewry, together with two other (non-Jewish) friends for helping out at the Jewish Awareness Day, which involved putting up posters of Somali Jews and Israeli swimsuit models around the quad, as well as handing out free Israeli food: Crispy falafel, fresh couscous salad and lots of hummus.

I am not sure if the event helped to raise the profile of Jews in the land of long white cloud, but it was good fun. Somehow we found ourselves right next to the Meat Club's weekly barbecue of a gigantic pile of sizzling sausages and bacon. And behold, they got extremely uncomfortable and one of them went as far as getting someone from AUSA to ask us if we had permission to be there. This amusing minor incident reflects on the society in general where the atheistic/agnostic/apathetic are more easily upset than genuine believers.

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BTW, please let me know if you have spotted a heavily used iPod Nano with the menus in Polish, it could be stolen property, thanks.

Practical Inception

 What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere. 

---Don Cobb

I quote from movies all the time, however the one above stands out because something I witnessed today. 

We were about to start a routine toxicology lab and the lab supervisor was going over the safety procedures. After some politically correct information about ethics, he mentioned "...one of the problems we had in the past years was people fainting, so if you are known to faint to blood don't sit on the stools and fall to crack your head open..."(I did not chronicle word for word but the meaning is close). At this moment, the noise of a soft object hitting the ground was heard. Someone actually fainted; fortunately he fell forward and did not hit anything. When he came to, he had no recollection of events before the blackout.

Later, several people had fits of malaise both before and after taking blood samples, including my lab partner who had to spend several minutes sitting on the floor before work resumed.

The affected appear healthy and in sound mind. None of them is known to be haemophobic or have any other related phobia (Trypanophobia, traumatophobia....I am sure one can spend a lifetime counting phobias.). Blood sampling is not novel either; the same has been done in one of the bigger labs last year using the same equipment, and nobody showed any adverse reactions. 

So what went wrong? First, the speaker suffers from self-admitted Stage IV pessimism, which definitely did cast a bad outlook on this lab. The language used was also suggestive (If you are......) and came from someone of authority(He's a professor so he must be right), which tricks the subconscious to believe the possibility of fainting(This can happen). The ideal parasite grows, traveling up the vagus nerve to shut down conscious. Although only one person came down initially, the event itself reinforces its presence in others and the cycle keeps ticking.

Inception, self-fulfilling prophecy, massive hysteria or whatever, it is working in our subconscious to deliver some surprises.

Before I close this topic, I must mention that yawning is contagious. Yeah, seeing, reading or even merely thinking about yawning is enough to induce yawning, again unconsciously. Next time when the chain reaction start while you are giving a speech, try not to blame them. 

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Emotional rollercoaster explained in songs:

First I was like this

Then I was like this


Deep down

Sighs.

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Also, you can follow me on Twitter @DillADH. Another late conversion here but I am learning fast.

Adieu.