Category Archives: Emmjay

The Last Mouse – or Somebody Swiped My Brain

13 Tuesday Nov 2012

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Billie GraceLynn Dead Mouse

Story by Emmjay

One of the best things about being a cyber dinosaur is that it is easier for us to see the broad sweep of silicon history than it might be for say, our kids.  These little tackers (well young adults, really) regard everything cyber as situation normal, nothing to see, part of the landscape.

It was always this way.

No, it wasn’t.

In the last 60 years we have seen at least six distinct eras;

  • The mainframe
  • The minicomputer
  • The microcomputer
  • The rise of the Internet
  • The rise of the mobile phone and its evolution into the smartphone
  • The emergence of the tablets.

We have seen the rise and fall – with a few notable exceptions of great dynasties and the incessant tinyfication and acceleration of everything.

These have been no mean technical feats.  When I started to use computers in the late 1970s, I got to run one – or on a good day, two programs on a computer that cost millions of dollars.  It involved booking a punch machine in advance, punching hundreds of cards and feeding them into an amazing high speed card reader so that the chunk of instructions and data could get Into another queue and shuffle its way towards the sacred CPU and then onto the hallowed line printer which would (nine times out of ten) cough up a message some time later that day.

I used to ride the departmental bicycle over to the computer centre and pick up the print out saying “error43178”.  This was bad. I had to find the manual and learn what bone-headed mistake in my typing had wasted everyone’s precious time.  Probably a comma out of place.  Then find the offending card.  Of course that was only the first offending card.  Next trip across campus I would find the second one – and so on.  So computing was really good for my calves but almost as good at teaching patience. Until some bastard stole the departmental bicycle.

Technological speed increases and miniaturisation go hand in hand with less power consumption and therefore less chip-killing heat.  Fortunately the march of technology has been a catholic venture, spreading the benefits around.  Our modest phones store volumes of data that were unimaginable in 1970. But more significant benefits have roared through what cyberists call the user interface.  Older dinosaurs than me remember paper tape input – preceding cards, then, wonder of wonders, my own keyboard. Still in the hunt, the keyboard, still the annoying design born of speed-challenged typewriters, but wireless now and virtual (he said madly tapping his touchscreen iPad).

Then Apple popularised the mouse as a pointing device, invented some time earlier by Xerox.  I remember fondly a Tennant cartoon of the first mainframe mouse*.  It was a dodgem car linked to the computer by a cable as thick as your arm, and it was driven like rally cars – with a man sitting in the driver’s seat and a navigator saying “Whoa, bud, back it up ! Back it UP!”

Now for the patient, the point of this story.  I have a lovely Apple MacBook Air.  It’s a simple ultralight notebook computer with adequate performance, long battery life and a beautifully clear screen.  It has a touchpad (which I have never liked…. On any notebook computer I have owned) so I use a cordless Bluetooth mouse.

This is but one of my tools of trade.  I also use a smartphone with a delightful touch screens and lately an iPad.

I have become so used to using gestures on a touch screen that I found myself swiping the screen of the MacBook Air, wondering why the onscreen page didn’t turn like it does on the phone and the iPad.  I have clearly turned the corner and fallen into an open grave.  The patiently-waiting grave of the mouse.

Can you see the tombstone?  Mouse, born in the 70s, grew up in the 80s, went to college in the 90s, worked hard in the noughties, retired in the twenty teens and passed away quietly in the bottom drawer in the 2020s.

There you have it. 2020 foresight.

Vale in advance, little rodent pointer.

*  You can see and buy a copy of this little beauty of a cartoon  – watermarked to death – unless you want to stump up $150 to use it for six months on  a blog like this….

http://www.the5thwave.com/cartoon/3844

Mind the Narrow Mind, Mind

12 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in Emmjay, Travels

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Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1936.

Story by Emmjay

It is or perhaps WAS said that travel broadens the mind.  There is no information about whether the broad minds travel, or whether travel minds the broad.  I suspect that the former might be answered in the negative. And the latter in the negative too, but there is clearly an underlying assumption that the mind could do with a spot of broadening -that it is somewhat narrow in the untraveled state.

But travel is more likely, according to G.K. Chesterton to achieve the reverse – bringing out our disapproval for places, people and practices that may differ from those with which we are familiar. He was suggesting that there may be no inherently inferior aspect, but that it is human nature to find fault on the basis of difference alone.  We tend to regard the familiar as naturally better.

Chesterton went on to say some seriously non-PC things that shout national stereotyping. I won’t repeat them because to do so is to cast scorn upon a man for having lived in a different era where it was OK to spruik generalities about “the Turk” and contrast his personal and collective peccadillos with those of the long-held to be superior British character, particularly since we know that this chap was simultaneously responsible for the genocide of over a million Armenians at the same time the ANZAC diggers were lauding him as such a worthy foe.

We may think that travellers, far away from home for long periods might not be the most unbiased observers, and in fact may themselves display characteristics not typically seen amongst their countrymen at home.   Chesterton cites the example of “the Americans”, we know as kind, polite and generous hosts in their own country curiously turning into loud dressers with even louder voices and outrageously insensitive ignorance of local manners when they are abroad.

I once met a family like that visiting Franz Joseph Glacier, South Island, NZ. It was 1973. They dragged along a teenage son who was painfully shy – well everyone looked shy next to Roger and Marjorie.  I remember the poor lad’s name to this day.  Marjorie was the photographer.  She shrieked “Stand by the glayshure, WORREN”.  Not such a difficult request since it was everywhere around us and underfoot to boot.

But I have to confess that when touring, I would have to be very homesick before I would gravitate towards many Aussie accents.  As Englishmen have never caught on to how ridiculous they look in shorts, long socks and sandals, so many Australians cannot bear to leave their stubbies and thongs locked in the wardrobe at home.  It’s as if the attire is taking the person on holidays and not the reverse.  I suppose the payback for dressing like you’re at home in the rumpus room, when you are in fact travelling overseas, is that people who cover up and wear stout shoes are the ones who survive longest when the plane falls from the sky in a ball of fire.

Thankfully, if Chesterton is right, we’ll avoid narrowing of the mind by avoiding travel – and not giving oxygen to shock jocks.  We can taste the cuisine of Tuscany at the local Italian and visit the Uffizi online.  No queues.  No deep vein thromboses.  No beggars.  No airport security.  No jetlag or snappy customs officials.  Toilet in the next room.  Safe water in the tap and no ripoff money changers.  Mind expanding ?  You bet !

Breaking Through the Thin Crust

09 Friday Nov 2012

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So the time to order a pizza is when you’ve had a long, difficult day at work and you feel too tired and hassled to bother cooking.

It was dark when I pulled into the council car park opposite the pizza place, blipped the central locking and was taking a few steps across the footpath when a small white missile zoomed right across my path. Inches away.

I was lucky. I caught it in my peripheral vision just in time to avoid becoming a hood ornament.

The driver sprang out, slammed his door without so much as a second thought. He sprinted across the road and disappeared into the pizza place, dangling his keep-it-hot bag.

I followed, stunned but unharmed, glad I was still upright.

I asked for the manager. He fronted. I was clearly agitated. I told him that one of his delivery people had almost run me over.

He asked me, “Which one?

“How do I know which one ?”

“What kind of car was he driving ?”

“A small white one.”

“I have several drivers with small white cars.”

“The one that just ran through your front door.”

“I’ll check,” he said disappearing inside – and not coming back out.

I was, by this time, ready to make a scene among the other customers but I could see this was going nowhere and so I paid for my pizza and decided a fair thing was to re-arrange the careless driver’s windscreen wiper, not seeing he was following me closely with his next delivery.

Now it was his turn to hit the roof, “What are you doing?!!”

“You almost ran me over.”  I think I pointed out that he was careless, had unmarried parents and that he was lucky he was not explaining a downed pedestrian to the police as well.

“You vandalised my car. ”

“Let’s talk to your employer about your insurance and your driving record.”

We marched back into the shop.

I handed the manager the broken windscreen wiper, admitted my misdeed and asked him what he was going to do now. He refused to accept any responsibility for his employee and left us “to sort it out ourselves.”

I vaguely remember him asking me to not swear in front of the other customers.

By this time, the driver was really upset. He wanted all kinds of compensation from me. I flatly refused.

He chose more abuse as his preferred option and slammed his door. “I’ve got your number,”he yelled.

“I, have yours too” I said, taking his picture as an afterthought.

He screeched off – driving over the gutter and banging the front of his car on the road.

I wasn’t proud of myself, but I did learn some basic truths – the importance of accepting responsibility, the utility of a simple apology, how poorly some pizza chain managers understand customer service and the superior value of petty revenge.

And then, after cooling off, I felt a modicum of remorse for having taken my anger and frustration out on some poor bastard who relied on a crappy job rushing around, risking his life and mine too – delivering pizzas for a pittance for a manager who wasn’t worth feeding.

First published amazingly, over at the ABC – https://open.abc.net.au/projects/500-words-caught-out-28dn4ay/contributions/breaking-through-the-thin-crust-19nq5te

An Open Letter to the American Electoral College

05 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in Emmjay, Politics in the Pig's Arms

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Ignorance is Bliss.

Remember the last time we thought the American people voted for a half-wit Texan hayseed and the world was plunged into the Middle East War ?  Mission accomplished !  Using some seriously dubious voting scam in Florida.

I didn’t think I would ever be able to forgive the people of America for the wash out of that global malfeasance.

Well, I think an apology is due.

The American people didn’t elect the President then, the time after and the time after that.  And they won’t elect the president tomorrow our time (or the day after their time).

Apparently, the great American Constitution does not even give her citizens the right to vote.  They have a patronising system  called “The Electoral College” who vote for them by some kind of proxy deal, not in any way open to skull-duggery, massive cash flows or other dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

So not only are American citizens relieved of their democratic rights – you know, the ones’ they’ve successfully transplanted to grow so well in Iraq, but less so in Afghanistan, but the remainder of the world can have our liberty and our superannuation circumscribed by the same folks.

In Australia, we have not only a right to vote, but an obligation.  But we have our own pack of dropkick unrepresentative swill, chosen by ……. wait for it ……. a mysterious ouija board process called “pre-selection”.

The only real electoral difference between the American democratic “system” and our own therefore, is the name of the scam and the shoe colours of the crooks who run them.

Oh, and when Australians screw up the election and vote for some unspeakable arsehat for Prime Minister, the rest of the world could not care less.

Accordingly, with hand on heart, I do solemnly entreat the American Electoral College, whomever you may be, to please not fuck it up this time, because when you DO, billions of what you call we “Aliens” get to live with the results.

Your humble peasant,

Emmjay

PS: The Pig’s Arms psephologist and bookie, Antony Puce has his money on Obama by a length.

Jun Inoue Makes a Splash at Assin

27 Saturday Oct 2012

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Finished Work

Last week, FM and Emmjay went to a performance art event in one of FM’s favourite  fashion houses – Assin in Paddington, Sydney (also based in Melbourne).  This was curiously the first time Emmjay and FM had actually seen art in the making.

Jun Inoue performed at Assin in Melbourne and produced a wonderful triptych piece that reminded us of a combination of large scale calligraphy and street art.  Unfortunately we had to go after a couple of hours, but we returned to see the completed work.

FM and Emmjay would like to than Assin’s owner Ms Fernanda Kasjan for her kind invitation.

Ms Fernanda Kasjan – and her beautiful Pisces tattoo.

Video taken on the redoubtable iPhone 4s…… not great, but there, none-the-less and processed with Apple iMovie using steady cam.  Soundtrack provided by the artist as he worked.

Not Copping It Sweet – Jailing the Scientists

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

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Abruzzo earthquake damage

The ABC today ran an interesting and somewhat alarming story about six seismologists being jailed in Italy for failing to provide adequate warning of a magnitude 6.8 quake that devastated the ancient town of L’Aquila in April 2009 – killing 300 people and injuring 1,000 more.

The furore over the sentencing and imprisonment was described from the point of view of the scientific community being up in arms and making ugly noises about the imprisonment being a major disincentive for any scientist  – or I suppose other professionals like engineers to provide advice to government in case the advice results in a pear-shaped disaster.

It raises several issues –

  • the culpability of professionals for their advice – regardless of whether they could have accurately foreseen the consequences or not;
  • societies’ desire for laying the blame and making somebody pay for the bad things that can and do happen to individuals, and
  • insurance companies’ comparative appetites for risk and profit.

We have seen comparable post-disaster witch hunting in Australia in the terrible Victorian bushfires and the Queensland / Brisbane floods where government officials have been shown the blowtorch on the belly for making – or conversely not making decisions that might have had less severe outcomes.  Professional careers have been ruined as well as lives lost and there is not much coverage of the psychological damage wrought on professionals who may suffer terrible guilt mingled with entrenched denial of culpability for the caprices of nature.

The scientists at the heart of the L’Aquila earthquake matter were essentially criticised for having met a few days before the major quake when small tremors had been experienced – and having issued cautious warnings – that presumably the locals ignored.  Neither of these mishaps is difficult to understand.  The ABC piece speaks of Italy as having the most seismically active regions in Europe with hundreds of tremors each year.  And the assertion is that few of these small tremors precede major quakes.

It’s easy to imagine that a scientist who frequently calls “wolf” just in case – causing massive scale evacuations to no good effect is pretty soon going to be facing the same gun as those recently incarcerated.

But in truth, when dealing with mother nature, nobody, not even the best scientists with the most experience and state of the art equipment, data and computing power can really tell the future.  So it should not be open for anyone to not just apportion blame, but to mete out punishment to a scientist for being, at the end of the day, merely human and having interpreted equivocal information in a way that time judged to be incorrect.

While the police and judiciary in L’Aquila and say, New Orleans have sought to bang heads in the name of retribution for the dead and suffering populations in their boroughs, there seems to be little appetite amongst the Japanese for payback to the executives, engineers and scientists who clearly were responsible for the design, operation and maintenance of the Fukushima – and other nuclear reactors – disasters in waiting for which they were able to plan and have contingencies in place.  Curious.

While public officials and politicians may be content to sheet home the blame for the extent of damage caused by natural disasters in the man made environment, insurance companies  – for whom the threat of the same is pure oxygen – blame is directly linked to profit.  These monsters will happily take the cash from punters for decades, and when the shit hits the fan, they are genetically predisposed to try to apportion as much blame to the victims – or other insurance companies’ customers as possible – All in the name of profit.  Nothing to do with ameliorating the disaster.

Witness the hair-splitting of disgraceful insurers over the definition of floodwater versus storm water in their slimy attempts to defraud policy holders of their due entitlement to compensation.

Pity the poor people of New Orleans who have lived through one of America’s worst natural disasters.  Whole devastated districts remain, years after the events because even those who were insured – and who received some kind of payout for having their homes and possessions destroyed cannot rebuild because the insurance companies have refused to re-insure any property in these particularly low-lying neighbourhoods.  The boroughs where live the poorest Americans.

One of the major differences between the New Orleans and L’Aquila disasters was the response of the disaster management authorities after the events.  The incompetence of the Bush-appointed managers and the President himself in taking a leadership role was perhaps the lowest point in an epically bad presidency.  But the strengths of the Churches and welfare agencies and the massive resources in the US economy to assist the people of Louisiana proved to be decisive in the end.  Not much has been said about the fate of the people of L’Aquila after the quake.  The ABC piece said that this is the third time that the ancient town has been flattened and one wonders, like it is for the  good folk of Christchurch, whether enough is now enough.

It is some comfort – perhaps small comfort to see the victims of these terrible disasters coming together to support each other, but there is a similar look on both the faces of the insured and the uninsured alike.  The look is a mix of apprehension about the steep mountain they will both need to climb and the appreciation of the care and support they afford each other.

So is there any justification for punishing scientists and engineers who time later proves to have “got it wrong” ?  Will it raise the dead or the buildings ?

Take it Like a Man

08 Monday Oct 2012

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Borrowed from Lethbridge in the Brisvegas Courier Mail

“No, he got what he well and truly fuckin’ deserved”, said Emmjay.

“That’s a bit harsh”, Jules replied. “I mean, they took his Merc off him and it wasn’t even a divorce settlement”.

“ I reckon he’s had it comin’ for ages”, said Emmjay “the price you pay for stepping on the toes of not just anybody, but the bloody Prime Minister”

Jules paused for a pull on his lemon lime and bitters, reflecting that indeed this bloke had been stirring the shit just a tad too vigorously for ages.  “Still, I think he reflects the views of many Australians”.

“Many white anglo rednecks, you mean.  Fuckin’ rednecks that he personally created by soaking otherwise decent folk in bile every day on the radio”, said Emmjay taking Jules’ bait hook line and sinker.

“Not all of them are Anglos” said Manne.  “Some of them are, you know, Italians, Greeks, Lebs and stuff”.

“Anyone without a decent edumacation” gets into the club” said Hung.

A lone figure shuffled in through the side door and assumed the position at the far end of the bar.

“Mention his name and he appears”, thought Merv, but before he could speak, Emmjay returned to his theme du jour, failing to notice the recent arrival.

“I still think the bastard got what he deserved… it’s just not on to diss some poor bugger who’s lost his pappy” said Emmjay.

“Her pappy”, said Helvi.

“Yes, of course, Her pappy.  The bloody Prime Minister’s pappy.  And more to the point, the bloke in question was more than just a decent chap, he was a bloody saint, helping out the troubled folk of Adelaide”.

Merv cleared his throat.

“I heard that ALL the sponsors have pulled out of his gigs” said Big M. “Or not exactly, the radio station has caused a ‘pause in advertising’ to allow the offended businesses to get over the cyber bullying campaign that Gez and Emmjay have been supporting”.

“That’s poop!” said Emmjay.  “They’re waiting for it to all blow over and those do-gooder lefty basket weaving Balmain types to wander off and find some other gay whales’ landrights cause to trumpet”.

Merv stirred up a Pimms for the lone figure at the far end of the bar.

“What kind of poofter drink is that ?” speculated Hung. “It could be a pink drink, but there’s no umbrella, so it’s definitely not a Pig’s Arms special”.

Merv coughed again, with special emphasis and proceeded in a northerly direction along the bar, noted Foodge.

By this time, the more astute patrons of the Pig’s Arms had noticed the lone, stoutly-built and slightly care-worn figure with the off-grey complexion at the northern extremity (or as Waz called it, ‘the cathedral end’) of the bar.

Emmjay went on.  “I mean who really knows what this Faustian lump really thinks.  He’s become a parody of himself.  Always trying to outdo the last outrage he’s foisted on his radio audience of retards, dropkicks, pillow-biters, Nazis, sheep-botherers, paedos, Liberal-voters, tax-dodgers, snake-oil merchants and miscellaneous fuckwits.”

“More to the point” said Jules, handing Emmjay another can of petrol to throw on the fire, “He still gets to keep his job, despite everything, because he bloody well owns a chunk of the station, bought with his wad of cash for comments”.

“That’s right !” said Emmjay. “But at least this time, he’s providing a bit of competition to the ABC in the advertising-free, but still crap end of the media spectrum.”

‘Well, if we can get advertising-free crap for free, I want my eight cents back”, said Big.

The patrons were becoming increasingly aware of the rising tide of sobbing from the cathedral end.  The tide was going out on the Pimms and coming in on the cheeks of the lone slumping figure.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake” said Emmjay, wheeling on his stool and confronting the distraught figure.

“Maaate” he said to the pink galah, at the same time throwing Merv and Jules a look like a man who was about to pay them back in spades for setting him up.

“Tough gig, sport.  The rough taste of Julius Marlows on the palate.  A terrible price to pay for a tiny slip of the tongue amongst mates”. said Emmjay.  “I know, I’ve been there and done that myself.  I have said harsh things at inappropriate times.  But you know what, sport ?  I’ve never made a living out of it.  And when I said I was sorry, I actually meant it.”

“Come on tiger, finish the drink and I’ll give you a lift home in the Zephyr.  It’s time for you to take it like a man”.

Calling Leigh Sales a Cow – Moosic to my Ears

29 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Cricics, Critics, Everyone's a Critic, Emmjay, Politics in the Pig's Arms

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I’d rather be a cow than a dinosaur. Sexism versus ageism.

The recent post at the Drum (Finishing the Job on Misogyny, August 29) about the Grahame Morris spat is all politically correct stuff.  Who could seriously argue that calling a much exalted TV reporter “a cow” is acceptable ?

But neither is a so-called senior TV reporter entitled to talk over the top of her hosts’ answers and ask disgraceful questions that show a complete lack of respect for the positions of PM and other senior ministers.  We can see that scoundrels are lying through their teeth, Ms Sales.  You don’t need to prove it !

I think that Ms Sales and Mr Uhlmann are both a disgrace to their profession.  In my book they do not enjoy the same social status as the leaders of our country and they should show some respect.

Neither have they contributed anything positive to the nation.  This is not informing Australians.  It’s a pathetic attempt at racing the commercial stations to the bottom, most of the time.

Ms Sales and Mr Uhlmann are both just sh1t-stirrers at a time the nation is oversupplied with the same.

It seems that Wayne Swan, Julia Gillard and Bill Shorten have been coached and have finally been able to deal with Ms Sales and Mr Uhlmann’s goading.  Not only do they seem to not lose their cool under cross-examination, they seem to also be able to sell the message they came on screen to deliver – and frustrate the shit out of dickhead reporters at the same time.  I love the standard line “Well, I don’t accept the premise of your question, Leigh / Chris”.

Not a chance in hell that Tony Abbot or Joe or anyone on the Opposition front bench has the brains to pull the same thing off.  If they keep up being policy free and Labor keeps on handing out the goodies, it’s a monster turnaround – but no thanks to shock-jock tactics in the ABC.

In that regard, isn’t it a pleasant change to see the reporting end as buffoon rather than as a try hard would be inquisitor ?