Fried Porpoise

Two days ago I came across this article on BBC News.  From the article:

A baby porpoise that was washed over a mile (about 2km) inland by Japan's tsunami earlier this month has been rescued from a flooded rice paddy.

There's also a very nice picture of a guy carrying the unfortunate animal back into the ocean:

Today's top news on the same site here, reads:

Levels of radioactive iodine in the sea near the tsunami-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant are 1,250 times higher than the safety limit, officials say.

The readings were taken about 300m (984ft) offshore. It is feared the radiation could be seeping into groundwater from one of the reactors.

In other words, first a tsunami carries the animal two kilometres inland, then some misguided tree hugger throw it straight back a part of the ocean heavily contaminated with radioactive iodine.

People Full of Shit - Some More Than Others

I just saw a claim on History Channel (Sliced):

3 years?  I am sorry but anybody who spend 3 years of their life sitting on a toilet is full of shit - it's that simple.  Assuming an average life expectancy of 75 years that is very close to one hour a day - a full hour.  I personally doubt I spend more than 10 minutes myself and I am in fact full of shit - a fact most readers of this blog can testify to.

Later in the show they claim:

Well, that is definitely closer to the truth - except - I actually think that is quite low.  Assuming the before mentioned average person take a dump twice a day and a piss 4 times a day - and said person actually flush after both, what would come up to 164000 times.  In other words - contrary to their previous claim, this number is actually quite low.

Conclusion - well - History channel is entertainment - pure and simple - and they obviously do not spend a hell of a lot of time researching their claims.  Never trust a bloke who cut up a toilet with an angle grinder.

Service Dome Style

I wave written before about the odd service - or lack thereof - in Dome (KLCC).



Bad or no service is fairly common in Malaysia and so is rude or clueless staff. Dome however is not short staffed, the place is literally packed with staff. They do however seem to take ignoring customers to a whole new level.

Last time I was there, they ignored me for 20 minutes before they told me to get lost because the table I was sitting at was reserved. This time I think they decided to tease me a bit - at least it was a new and rather unique approach.

After about 5 minutes a waiter, rushing pass my table, asked if someone had taken my order yet. I answered: "no, nobody have bothered yet", but I am not completely sure she heard my reply, because by the time I started to answer she had already walked on to clean the next table. She returned 5 minutes later and asked if I was ready to order. I replied that I had been ready all the time but nobody bothered to ask before. Once again, she didn't seem awfully interested in my reply, because she once more walked on leaving me talking to myself.

Finally after another 5 minutes or so another waiter came and asked me to repeat my order. This one managed to stay long enough for me to explain I hadn't had a chance to order and I would like a cup of coffee.

It is one thing to be ignored by waiters - which is their usual approach in Dome - but this is a completely different ballgame. Why the fuck do they ask questions if they are not the least bit interested in the reply. It's rude and it's a complete waste of everybody's time.

It's amazing that place is still alive.

Idiotic idea!

From Planet F1:

"F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone is considering creating artificial rain during races to spice up the sport.

With overtaking becoming increasingly difficult in dry conditions, more and more people are looking to the weather gods to intervene with a bit of rain. In 2010, most of the on-track excitement was caused by some heavy downpours.
Ecclestone has taken note of this and believes he has come up with a cunning plan.
"Overtaking is almost impossible because in the dry there is only one line good for maximum speed because of the rubber on the track," he told the official Formula One website. "You have a completely different picture when it is wet. We always had the most exciting races in the wet so let's think of making rain...

Amazing!  I got a much better idea.  Why not install explosive wheel nuts on all the cars - programmed to explode at random times.  It would have as much to do with car racing as artificial rain, but I am sure it would lead to some absolutely spectacular crashes.

There was also some talk that all the Tilke designed tracks were boring and too forgiving.  Take Singapore for example:

It is obvious to me that Tilke missed an absolutely AWESOME possibility here.  What they really need is to change turn 8 and turn 14 into either an intersection or a good old fashioned round-about.  Now THAT would lead to spectacular - well - ahem - show if not racing. In fact they could start by taking Top Gear up on their offer of using the Top Gear test track instead of Bahrain (a figure-8 track without an over or under pass). We need more intersections in F1.

How the Hell do They do That?

I was playing around with Google Maps on my savagely hacked Nook Color "e-book reader" (well it was - now it's an Android tablet), when I noticed this:



That is in reality a circle of I guess less than 100 m in diameter and the center is less than 20 m from my actual location at the time (which is the tall building to the left of the circle of confidence - right next to the pool that is half visible).  Now I am fairly used to this from various mobile phones with built-in GPS, but here is the interesting part: "This is a Nook Color"!!!  It has not got built-in GPS and it most certainly hasn't got any kind of cell-phone radio built-in either.  The only means of wireless connectivity is Wifi.  How the hell do they do that???

Technically I reckon there are two possibilities:

1. They use whatever IP address I connect from when I access the maps server
2. They triangulate the Wifi SID's

I am fairly convinced it's not the first of these options.  By checking the IP address I reckon they might be able to put my location within perhaps a few kilometers if their database of IP addresses are extremely detailed, but there is no way they could possibly achieve the level of confidence that they display here.

In other words they must use Wifi triangulations and the fact that they can do that in the first place is quite mind boggling really.  People put up new wireless access points and switch off old ones all the time.  In other words, Google must have access to information about visible access points in "near real time".  There is only one way they can do that and that is harvesting statistics each time a GPS and Wifi enabled phone connect to Google.

I am not particularly worried about Google knowing where I am.  After all - that is the whole point of their Latitude service.  However I do find it slightly dodgy if Google collect the statistical information from GPS enabled devices.  When I use my Nokia 5800 to connect to Google Maps, obviously it will send the GPS information about my location to Google.  But the fact that they might send information about visible Wireless access points (and probably cell phone towers too) is a bit questionable.  While I don't pay any traffic charges for my 3G connection a lot of people do and I don't remember Google telling me that I am contributing to their business in this way.

I guess I will have to do some network sniffing in the near future.