- sadlittlewebjournal 3.0 released
sadlittlewebjournal, the Perl-based software that powers this site (and a few others) celebrates is 10th anniversary this year! To celebrate, I'm finally bumping the major version up to 3.0, with a swag of new features.
The most obvious change has to do with the site's redesigned front page, the news page. Until now, the news and journal pages were largely interchangeable: journal had a few extra metadata fields and a password option, and news displayed more entries per page, but they otherwise worked the same. Part of the problem, though, was that few people would check for new journal entries because they weren't on the front page.
The original intent was for news to contain shorter posts than journal, so I've just taken that a step further and now divided sadlittlewebjournal into "microblog" (news) and "blog" (journal). You can post directly to news as before, but it can also aggregate posts from your external microblog (so long as it has an RSS feed), and it will also include a summary of posts to the journal (there is a new "summary" field for this).
The next release after this will work in the other direction too: it will send whatever you post to your journal upstream to your Twitter or StatusNet microblog. For now, you still have to do that manually. If you'd like to give sadlittlewebjournal a spin on your own server, feel free to download the source.
- Bangkok
This week we returned to Thailand for the first time since our honeymoon in Phuket. But this time we were in Bangkok, which is no comparison. Thailand grew out of the now-ruined city-state of Ayutthaya, to which Bangkok is the successor. So still today, it is a very dominant social, political and cultural centre of the country. With 11 million people, it also rivals Manila and Tokyo as the largest Asian city we have visited (Kuala Lumpur isn't even in the running).
Whereas nearby Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam sided with the communists during the cold war, Thailand sided with America. So another relic of Thailand's history is that hoards of Americans are still here, supermarket shelves are stacked with American processed food that can't be found in Malaysia or even Australia, and hawkers sell (presumably counterfeit) Valium. Did Thailand benefit from its choice of allegiance? It's hard to say; on the ground, it's very much like its neighbours - a little richer, sure, but also larger and with better geography and natural resources.
Being encumbered by kids this time limited the sightseeing we were able to do, but we did check off the must-sees (the Grand Palace including its Emerald Buddha, and Wat Pho including its huge Reclining Buddha), plus a couple of kid-friendly museums (the informative Museum of Siam and the less-informative but entertaining Madame Tussauds), much market and mall shopping (I picked up a remote trigger for my camera), and even the nightlife, thanks to a babysitter we hired for the night.
- StatusNet YOURLS plugin
This may seem like déjà vu, because I previously posted about an identi.ca plugin that I had written for YOURLS, the personal URL-shortening service. But this is exactly the reverse of that: rather than shortening and posting your link via YOURLS, you shorten and post it via a StatusNet service such as identi.ca.
Frustratingly, as soon as I finished writing it, I found that someone else already had.
Anyway, installation instructions and a download link are available on the StatusNet wiki.
- Publicly Verifiable Random Selection
Online organisations commonly need to form committees that are randomly drawn from a pool of volunteers. For example, the IETF's nominations committee has long been selected in this way. But the problem is, how can its members, who may live around the world, be sure that the draw was really random? Couldn't whoever drew the names out of a hat have fudged the results?
The IETF's answer to this problem, as befitting its mandate, was a technical one: a software program and associated Internet standards document (RFC 3797) that enables anyone to verify the true randomness of the selection. It works by taking the values from a pre-agreed source of randomness, such as upcoming national lottery results, to seed the draw so that it can be verified by anyone.
The problem, until now, is that there is no downloadable version of this program - it has to be compiled from source, copied and pasted out of the RFC - and even when successfully compiled, requires access to the command line, which although simple for members of groups like the IETF, puts it beyond the capacity of less technologically clueful organisations.
Hence my release of a downloadable version of the code with instructions and a Makefile to aid its compilation, together with an even easier Web interface for newbies, which I am hosting online for those who don't wish to compile the software themselves.
Anyone can now visit this page to enter the size of the pool of nominees, the number to be selected, and the source of random numbers that has been pre-agreed, and the page will randomly select the successful candidates. Thanks to Reileen Dulay for working on the Web interface with me! We plan on improving the software further over the coming weeks.
- Bali
It seems as though we only just got back from Langkawi, but thanks to Air Asia's promo fares, we are again cooling our toes and sipping cocktails at another tropical island, Bali. Dom was last here when she was a toddler, and I not long after that, and we had both stayed at the overpopulated beach resorts. This time, we checked into an inland resort in the cultural centre of Bali, Ubud. Although still tourism-driven, Ubud is small enough that one needn't wander far to find yourself in the thick of the jungle or amongst green paddy terraces. Many locals in this area still wear sarongs or carry loads on their heads, and old women even go around bare-chested (frustratingly, the younger ones don't).
Indonesia and Malaysia share a lot in common, including (mostly) their language and their religion - but not in Bali. Here, the dominant religion of the Malay people is Hinduism, whereas in Malaysia this is practised almost exclusively by ethnic Indians. Town and family temples are found everywhere, still carved and thatched using traditional materials and designs, and little bamboo offering boxes containing flowers and herbs are left along paths and outside shops. Bali even has its own unique written language, which is still used on signage here alongside roman lettering.
One of my few memories of my first trip to Bali was of the delightful fruit concoctions that were whipped up for us to drink. Here I enjoyed them again, with just the addition of one or two new magic ingredients such as arak, the Indonesian coconut palm spirit. Amongst the dishes we most appreciated was bebek betutu, spiced steamed duck served with sambal, rice and local vegetables. Much of the local cuisine is, of course, similar to what we are used to in Malaysia, but a notable exception is that pork (and even bacon!) is readily available. We couldn't resist trying a variation on a Malaysian staple that we could never eat at home - satay pork.
- Photography
I have found London one of the most difficult places to visit as an amateur photographer, because it makes my job far too easy. It is too full of obvious symbols of itself (phone booths, mailboxes, public transport, bobbies), and of alternately grand or quaint historical buildings and monuments that seemed to have been laid out ready-framed for the photographer. I keep resisting taking shots that seem just too perfect, feeling as though I would be like cheating - like buying one of those sets of someone else's slides that used to be sold at souvenir stands.
I want to be more transgressive in the images I capture. I linger in the underground, feeling the urge to capture couples kissing in corners, but always chickening out. An attendant assumes I'm lost, and asks me where I'm going. I vaguely tell her, and she immediately rattles off six alternate itineraries in detail. One of the options she presents sounds like it involves continuing in the direction I was going, so that's what I do. Coming up to the roadside, I discover its hidden motif of squashed autumn leaves, while iconic red busses and black cabs trundle by metres away. Capturing it and continuing on, I zoom in on the wistful face of a girl in the ticket office of some landmark. For a moment it seems I have attracted her attention, but camouflaged as a tourist, I have the perfect cover to be holding a camera.
In the hope of stumbling across the unexpected, I let all the obvious photo moments in London slip by. Is what I end up with any better? I don't know, but at least it's mine. I don't want beauty to be presented to me; I want to have to seek it out. What value is the prize of a perfect image, if you did nothing to earn it? Somehow that isn't photography, it's just... tourism.
- On this day
30 years ago... I was a grade 4 student at Kapinara Primary School in City Beach, Western Australia. The school's name apparently meant "by the sea", in some Aboriginal dialect. I enjoyed creative writing and was good at music. I wrote a patriotic song for a state-wide competition, and ended up winning an "Advance Australia Award" which was presented to me by the then Premier of Western Australia, Sir Charles Court, together with an Australia flag jumper as a prize. My mum thought it was odd that I had used the word "kelp" in my song (when describing the seashore), since even she did not know what it meant.
20 years ago... I was in my second year of my law and commerce degrees at Murdoch University. My computer, even then showing its age, was a PC clone with one 360kb floppy drive and one 10Mb hard drive, running MS DOS 5.0, with 704kb of memory, and an NEC V-20 processor running at 8Mhz. I ordered shareware by mail order or copied it off one of those new-fangled CD ROM drives at uni, and edited my assignments in PC Write. My favourite songs at around this time included "Brother of Mine" by Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe and "What Time is Love?" by the KLF. I was not in a relationship, and had never had a girlfriend, but hoped this would change soon.
10 years ago... I opened a new office at Mounts Bay Village in Perth for my IT consultancy and law practice (which still exists under new management). My computers now included an IBM Thinkpad 380D with 64Mb of RAM running Windows 2000, and a PC with 128Mb RAM running Corel Linux - which, after many hardware and software upgrades, today sits in Doyle's bedroom under the same hostname! Electronic music had stagnated, so I was now listening to more jazz and country artists like Diana Krall and Alison Krauss. Have a laugh at my website of the time (but be warned, disable Java first!). I was not in a relationship, and had never had a girlfriend, but hoped this would change soon.
- Wawasan 2020
Malaysia aims to become a fully developed economy by the year 2020. I have my reservations about the use of Western metrics of economic development to measure this progress, rather than a more balanced regionally-developed measure such as Bhutan's Gross Domestic Happiness, since Malaysia is already suffering from over-development, loss of traditional lifestyles and a rising cost of living.
But having said that, if Malaysia wants to emulate a more economically developed country now, there are a few simple steps that it could take to bring it pretty close, based on my experiences this week as a tourist in the holiday island of Langkawi.
1. Even in budget accommodation, it is never acceptable for the shower to spray directly onto the toilet. At least spend a few extra bucks on a partition.
2. Don't spend millions of Ringgit to develop tourist attractions, only to let them crumble through lack of routine maintenance.
3. Charging for entry to public toilets is only acceptable if cubicles are stocked with toilet paper and the seats have not been hosed down and left wet.
- Kenya, again
I have been attending my (and also the) sixth Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi. I have blogged about the Forum itself on my site IGF Watch, but here are a few observations about the rest of my second trip to Kenya. What little I saw of the country in between meetings was on a visit to a Consumers International member, in the heart of a poor suburb of the capital. Along the street leading to their office were rickety wooden market stalls, selling local produce, shoes, handicrafts, Coca-Cola and mobile phone accessories. Leading off the potholed street to the side were shanties of mud, sticks and corrugated iron.
I chose a more permanent-looking shophouse from which to buy some breakfast. The shopkeeper, separated from customers by steel security bars, sold me a packet of maize cakes, a tub of (unrefrigerated) yoghurt and a fruit drink for breakfast for about $1.50. (Other than the maize meal products, Kenyan food seems unexceptional: mainly mild meat and vegetable stews served with rice.) Although I drew a few stares in this part of town, the locals were friendly and most spoke good English. Closer to the big city, crime is more common and beggars tap on the windows of passing vehicles. One of the attractions of a luxury condominium touted in a magazine was you could live, shop and dine within its precincts without ever having to expose yourself to the streets outside.
Kenya is developing rapidly, with even the poorest having access to a mobile phone. I picked up a local SIM, and enough calling credit for my needs, for $1.50. The handsets themselves are also very cheap, dominated by unbranded or counterfeit Chinese models that carry two or more SIM cards, so that they can be shared. On the other hand the country's electricity supply is erratic enough that a refrigerator I saw advertised on television promoted the feature of an in-built cold pack that could keep its contents cool when the power was cut.
I didn't get to see any of Africa's famed wildlife, unlike other delegates who took time out for a Safari (I only arrived on the evening before the IGF began, and left on the morning after it ended). The only exception is that at the IGF lunches, which were served under canopies on the United Nations lawn. The eagles which soared over the heads of the delegates were at first magnificent and majestic, but then suddenly terrifying as they swooped down upon us to grab clawfuls of rice. The Hitchcockian scene of startled delegates yelping as they were set upon by hungry birds will be my lasting memory of this year's IGF.
- Australia
When I first moved to Malaysia, I would write blog entries about the odd things I had discovered about life in that strange new country. Now, Malaysia feels normal, and I've just spent a week back in Australia, which has felt rather odd. So here are three of the things I notice about Australia, as an expatriate returning home.
First, there's a lot of open space, and the roads that go through it are wide, straight, and fairly predictable. In Malaysia, illogical spaghetti junctions abound, and few houses or buildings have any grass around them. So I guess that counts as a win for Australia.
Second, Australians are less inclined to use heating or cooling until the temperature becomes quite unbearable. Central heating is almost unknown, and air conditioners are tuned to the 20s, whereas they are set to the teens in warm Malaysia. Probably another win for Australia in terms of energy efficiency.
Finally, it irks me how much of a nanny state Australia has become. People still have trampolines on their front yards, but now the edges are now surrounded by a net, so that the children can't fall less than a meter to the ground. Old buildings that would be left untouched in Malaysia are here disfigured with guard rails and protective barriers.
- terminus: To #Google's credit, at least they want you to read their ToS changes, rather than trying to sneak them past you as #Sony would
terminus's status on Friday, 27-Jan-12 18:55:31 MYT
- terminus: Africa IP Forum (http://jere.my/l/21) is co-organised by USA, Japan, France, and sponsored by ICC, Pfizer, Eli Lilly. Unbalanced much?
terminus's status on Friday, 27-Jan-12 15:24:31 MYT
- terminus: Happy Australia Day! Meat pies for dinner tonight.
terminus's status on Thursday, 26-Jan-12 10:24:17 MYT
- terminus: I have $8.40 credit on PSN, and the cheapest game is $8.45. But it will cost Sony more than 5c to process my credit card for that much. Win!
terminus's status on Wednesday, 25-Jan-12 19:48:59 MYT
- terminus: Version 3.0 of sadlittlewebjournal released, new microblog-style front page and much more! http://jere.my/l/20
terminus's status on Tuesday, 24-Jan-12 22:44:52 MYT
- terminus: Have had conjunctivitis for the last six days… Dom says I look like a character from a horror movie (gee, thanks)
terminus's status on Sunday, 22-Jan-12 08:31:00 MYT
- terminus: Have to love TeX error messages. Just got "Pretend that you're Hercule Poirot: Examine all clues, and deduce the truth by order and method."
terminus's status on Tuesday, 17-Jan-12 16:29:11 MYT
- terminus: Happy Ponggal (Indian harvest festival)!
terminus's status on Sunday, 15-Jan-12 17:23:05 MYT
- terminus: Just replaced Apache with Nginx on one of my virtual machines... why didn't I do this years ago?
terminus's status on Saturday, 14-Jan-12 23:24:03 MYT
- dominica: Flower pods at Putrajaya Taman Wetland http://ur1.ca/7hhk8
dominica's status on Saturday, 14-Jan-12 16:54:44 MYT
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Dominica Malcolm
comedian, web developer, filmmaker, wife, mother, amateur chef
- Bali, Nov 29-Dec 3, 2011
This trip is a new instalment of my “spend my birthday in another country” routine that is now in its 5th year. We started out the trip with a late afternoon flight to Denpasar airport on the 28th of November, which is the day before my birthday. The flight from Kuala Lumpur was 3 hours [...]
- Langkawi, Nov 1-7, 2011
Monday October 31st, 2011 Our flight to Langkawi, an island in the north of Malaysia, close to Thailand, was due to depart in the evening. It lasted all of an hour. What interested me most about the process was the fact that our ID was never checked. I supposed that it was because it was [...]
- Eastern USA + 12 hours in London, Sept 10-22, 2011
To understand the significance of this trip for me, you first need to know about a little thing called LJ Idol. LJ Idol has played a major role in my life over the last two years, to bring me to where I am today. Some people see it as a writing competition. Some people think [...]
- Trip to the Philippines, Aug 10-17, 2011
It’s been a while since I’ve been anywhere to write a travel post for! Most of our first two days on this trip were spent travelling. We arrived to KL’s LCCT early in the morning for a flight scheduled at just after 7am, but ended up departing two hours later, after we had to swap [...]
- Oil in the Alley and releasing the Music Video
As I wrote about in my last entry, part of my trip to Hawaii was spent filming a music video with improv rock duo Oil in the Alley. I’m not sure how many Mega Fans can say they’ve had such an opportunity to work with people they admire so much like I did. I lived [...]
- Macau, Hawaii and Hong Kong, November 13-29, 2010
In 2007, I was in the US for my birthday. The previous year, Australia. We’d moved to Malaysia by the time my birthday rolled around in 2008. By pure coincidence, I had managed to be in 3 different countries, 3 years in a row. That alone made me want to try being in a different [...]
- Trip to Cambodia, October 2010
12 Oct 2010 An early 7am flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia meant that we had to be up far too early in the morning. The biggest disappointment of waking up at 3:30am was that Leo (my 7 week old baby) still didn’t ask to be fed until after 5am. He could possibly have slept through [...]
- Trip to the Philippines, June 2010
There are 7107 islands in the Philippines. We limited ourselves to just one of the nearly 4000 inhabited ones so I suppose you could say we didn’t really explore much of the country. We still explored as much as we were able to with our limited time. Thursday, June 10, 2010 At 30.5 weeks pregnant, [...]
Copenhagen airport is pretty well hooked up to the city, with a train that takes only 12 minutes to get there. When we were collecting our luggage, we saw an ad for the Copenhagen card, which sounded like it could be pretty good value, so I told Jeremy to go ahead and get a 24 [...]- Christmas Vacation 2009-10, part 2 – Nottingham, Cardiff, Oxford, London, and Munich
We arrived in Nottingham in the late afternoon of December 21st to spend Christmas with Jeremy’s family. Jeremy’s brother, Matt, moved to Nottingham with his family a couple of years ago to study a PhD in Theology, and his sister, Annie, and her family decided to trek over for a year at the beginning of [...]
Leo's Weblog
Leonard Malcolm's weblog.
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