Tonica’s Neighborhood

Now that Vox has fixed whatever bug it has and I can write again, I can tell you about the following find on Google, which Janette mentioned on her blog.
   On the one hand, I am glad Google has been transparent about this and told us that it has noted down our advertising preferences. There are countless other companies that track us through their cookies and have not been honest enough to tell us about them.
   On the other hand, it is disturbing what is being tracked about us online by Google and other companies.
   Mine are not accurate. You would expect that my interest in cars would be noted, but no. Here are the categories Google has associated with me, which are so off you wonder just how bad its technology is:

Arts & Humanities
Computers & Electronics - Programming
Computers & Electronics - Software
Computers & Electronics - Software - Audio & Multimedia
Computers & Electronics - Software - ... - Internet Clients & Browsers
Entertainment - Celebrities
Entertainment - Multimedia Content - Flash Content
Entertainment - Multimedia Content - Video Clips & Movie Downloads
Internet - Online Goodies - MySpace Codes & Graphics
Photo & Video - Photo & Video Sharing
Social Networks & Online Communities - Blogging Resources & Services

I admit I have checked for some celebrity news. One in eleven strikes me as an extremely poor understanding of my preferences. I am not a programmer, have little interest in software, certainly do not want multimedia content about entertainment, use MySpace four times a year, and only share my videos and photos with you here on Vox (though I do look at the Lucire videos from time to time). While I blog, I doubt I need to be advertised to since I am already set in my ways; and I do not recall seeing any ad for blogging resources lately.
   When I started removing the above, Google added some extra categories, including something to do with punk music and another to do with news from Korea! Very lame.
   I already think Google’s Adsense programme to be one of the worst I have ever encountered in what is a very mature industry in the US. I have no idea why it is so well regarded or why people speak so highly of it; it is the antithesis of Amazon.com, for instance, which has become a bit of standard when it comes to online shopping.
   I imagine Google Adsense is the online advertising equivalent of Microsoft Word: no one knows any better, so they assume that things are not that bad.
   I have since opted out of these Google cookies, as it seems Google will not serve relevant advertising in any case.

Now that Vox seems to be letting me in within minutes rather than hours, my mind turned to cheesy 1980s’ mini-series. Remember when this was cool?

   Maurice Binder did the titles to this Sidney Sheldon-based mini-series, If Tomorrow Comes, starring Madolyn Smith. Binder’s trademark can be seen here: primary colours, a modernist approach to most elements, including the typography (ITC Modern No. 216). The hourglass motif was also used in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The scary thing is I remember the Nick Bicât theme after all these years, but didn’t remember Liam Neeson being in it as a co-star.
   One YouTuber has put up clips from the mini-series and I was surprised at how slowly things dragged on, even with a 10-minute selection. We’ve obviously become accustomed to the action in the big-screen blockbusters.
   Before Matt Damon was Jason Bourne, Dr Kildare was Jason Bourne. This also dragged on—the difference being I remembered it being slow at the time (1988) and thinking it only needed to be two hours. Evidently some movie executive thought the same in the 2000s with the Doug Liman version.
   However, for Ludlum purists, the mini-series was more faithful to the book and even has a few scenes that creep up in the second movie.
   Old Doc Kildare was looking pretty worn by 1988, though Jaclyn Smith still looked amazing (and in 2009, as a 60-something, she still does). There were some good action sequences, but they were few and far between. However, as with If Tomorrow Comes, some European filming gave the mini-series a bit of polish that was absent from the hourly TV shows on back then.
   Here’s how it started (similarly to the Matt Damon one): And here’s a meeting at Treadstone—and yes, that is Shane Rimmer in the military uniform:    How about this one, Deceptions, starring Stefanie Powers, from 1985? This stands up quite well, with a ridiculous plot of two twins swapping lives, and Barry Bostwick with a lot of facial hair. The finalé takes place on Tower Bridge, London, and they shut off the bridge to film it, so some big bucks were involved. More entertaining than a lot of the stuff on TV today, and certainly miles better than any of that reality garbage.

Wow. Six minutes to load the compose screen. That’s definitely this week’s record.
   This is the other photo I wanted to show:

   A beautiful 1969 Ford Mustang Fastback with a 351 in³ V8 under the hood. I asked the owner for permission to photograph his car which, sadly, had lost all oil pressure. I drove him to the petrol station in case the car was ‘out of gas’; when I came back along this route a while later, his car had gone, so I hope he was able to get it started.
   He says he has a friend with a Cobra Jet 428, which we both thought was the best of this series, and that this shape was probably the nicest before Bunkie Knudsen’s fat Mustangs hit the streets for the 1971 model year. Sometimes I like the ’68s, and the ’65s, but right now, the ’69s seem to appeal to my taste in 2009.

“Only” took 20 minutes for this screen to come up this time. In a day and age when we should wait no more than 20 seconds. Still, I’m sure Vox believes I should be happy because 20 minutes is less than 16 hours. ‘Yay!’ they must think, ‘our load times have come down from hours to minutes!’
   I know, no one likes the pissy tone I take when I begin these posts, but it’s so darned frustrating when technology does not work as advertised. And no one seems to think there’s anything wrong: I’ve heard from neither my ISP nor Vox on this bug.
   That’s not totally true. I haven’t heard anything recently. TelstraClear says there is nothing wrong and it can reach vox.com. Duh. I know that. So can I. I just can’t do anything while I’m there except make comments (hence I am using one post’s comment space to blog at—this is how ridiculous it has become—and to keep track of how often Vox’s massive bug is keeping me from doing what it says on the tin). I can’t compose, add photos, add videos, etc. Except once every long while when it opts to let me have a screen to write in.
   And Daisy, who seems to be the only person working at Six Apart who cares, has written to me as well. But I’ve heard nothing for a few days.
   Remember how long the Amazon conduit took to get fixed here? Considering this “can’t do stuff on Vox” bug has been around since August, and has gotten worse by the week, I’d rather sacrifice the Amazon conduit in favour of, well, being able to blog.
   Readers, I’m sorry you’ll have to put up with hugely long posts because I have no guarantee on when Vox will let me compose again.

Ben Kingsley
Here’s one thing I wanted to blog during one of the many, many blackouts on Vox.

Open Source Android mobile phone application development:

• developer.android.com
• developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator.html
• source.android.com/download
• source.android.com/download/using-repo

or if you'd prefer one platform for developing both iPhone and Android apps then you could try the

• Titanium Mobile Framework

which shares common APIs across devices and provides extensibility for each device’s unique capabilities.

I have just found some mobile augmented reality apps for Android and iPhone mobiles.

• http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2009/recoverygov-contracts-your-phone/
• http://www.getlocationscout.com/

which are based on the

• layar
• wikitude

augmented reality API's !

IBM suggest you can put a tiny cloud in your Android handset and experience the usefulness of a local Web server!

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-tinycloud/index.html

SkillsMatter are sponsoring both DroidCamp and DroidConf on 1 Dec 09 and 2 Dec 09 !

DroidCamp

MON
http://www.meetup.com/android/calendar/11842399/
http://barcamp.org/droidcon

DroidConf

TUE
http://www.meetup.com/android/calendar/11842399/
http://www.droidcon.co.uk/

See you there ! or if you cant make it why not join the Londroid monthly meeting group
http://www.meetup.com/android/ or the worldwide NING BMN Group http://droidcon.ning.com/

Yay, the compose screen! It only took nine hours for it to come up, rather than 16 since the blackout before.
   Here’s something else I wanted to share, before I realized that these screens only come up for a few minutes before they die again.
   About 10 years ago, I had a student called Rochelle Stewart, who was a very digilent worker. I hope she has done well. Every time I see City Life journalist Rachelle Stewart’s byline, I keep muddling them up.
   I have never met this R. Stewart, but she might be the hardest working woman in the community newspapers in this city. You see her byline a lot in her newspaper, and I would say if she ever quit, City Life would disappear.
   If you have the output of Rachelle Stewart, it is only natural that one would make the odd mistake. I know I would. And I should note that the ones she made below are acceptable when copy comes in at any publication—we have received far worse here.
   And with City Life’s foreign owners, who are much larger, there must be staff there who could catch them, because that is what they are there for.
   But no. I don’t think, in fact, any of these should have made it to print.
   Remember, these are the folks that had a ‘Melborne Cup’ (sic) special in 2008, where you could join the ‘Winners Cirlce’ (sic). And I really wanted to read this ‘Did you know?’ feel-good piece by Ms Stewart in the November 11 edition, but I kept getting distracted. I had to get out the pen:

   I have not marked some things that would be considered errors at JY&A Media but might be right based on City Life’s house style.
   I might be wrong, but I heard their subs are in Australia, so there is little wonder they do not know the correct spellings of our suburbs and streets. I can barely spell some of the Australian place names, though I can do Woomera and any place a car was named after.
   Of course, this probably means this paper won’t be endorsing my mayoral run because I am a smart-arse.

On Google News yesterday (during the Vox blackout):

   Nigeria: the Country might have slipped, but I wonder where Nigeria: the Movie is, and Nigeria: the Flame Thrower (the kids love that one).
   Apparently, we topped this index, which is nice to know. I wonder if Bill English’s housing allowances made it into the survey period.