Socially stupid

This proliferation of social interaction on the internet that permeates everything just annoys me. Its worth because I am trying to work on a Mac which is being extremely difficult, so already in a bad mood.

But how can it possibly be a good thing that even going into Apple's application portal that it offers these options when choosing to install an application?

Are there really people who want to broadcast on Facebook or Twitter that they've chosen to install/update a given program on their computer? And how is that even socially acceptable?

In a face to face environment, I might share information along those lines if I feel it is relevant to their interests, or is something that is fitting to the current social environment. But using social media is akin to virtually getting all your friends/acquaintances/family together at once, and yelling it out, then going back to what you were doing.

Its insane, especially when you consider that most of the stuff that gets "yelled out" is not interesting or relevant to most of the recipients. Its probably even offensive to half of them. The reason why this is particularly bad, is because people can't really engage through social media. Not like when you are face to face. So it all ends up being highly superficial, or else a flood of aggravated noise.

And I'm still mad at how hard it is to use Macs.

Don't try this at home

Going back a few years, at least back to 2007, there was a trend of holiday makers photographing themselves jumping on hotel beds. A quick search on the internet turns up more and more ridiculous photos of people getting some pretty good height as they treat hotel beds as trampolines.

Obviously the hotel owners aren't impressed as this is not an activity that beds in general are designed for, so bed frames and mattresses have their service lives prematurely shortened.

Well I managed to break my own bed doing a similar thing. I don't stand on the bed and jump, but sometimes after a hectic day, I'm eager for a nap as a reward, so its tempting to leap into bed rather than ease myself in.

While it seems that the pine planks can manage holding up a heavy mattress, they don't do well with sudden applications of weight so two of the planks which had knots in their section, fractured and broke yesterday afternoon.

If you have an annoyed wife telling you to get that fixed before Bunnings shuts, then you pretty much learn to treat the bed with a whole lot more respect from then on. No more of this, I guess.

Warning signs

I think I've gone senile. Time to put me out to pasture, or the glue factory, whichever is closer.

There's been a few occassions now when my wife and I are going out, I drive down the end of our street and get ready to join the main road, then I realise that I've completely forgotten where we were going. Its happened often enough now that she's actually started getting into the habit of reminding me when we reach the end of our street.

Its probably what I get for being grumpy most of the time. Blown all my brain cells from the blood pressure.

Grumpy just keeps on going

Our public transport isn't the best financially managed mass-transit service in the world. Far from it in fact.

One of the examples of poor management is the way that they happily go with lowest bidders on infrastructure almost everytime. Escalators are a good example of this. Think about how many escalators there are in the world and just how long they've been around for. The first prototype was built in 1899 (courtesy of Wikipedia) and they've been getting built and refined ever since. So, much like cars, its not that the technology is new, just that you get to know that some manufacturers make them a little better than others. The ones who don't generally sell their stuff cheaper in order to remain in the market, hence the general view that "you get what you pay for".

Well that view seems to have been ignored when our PTA bought escalators, and also when they bought the equipment to support an electronic ticketing system and automatic ticketing gates.

The problems we have with the electronic ticketing system, is that I'd guess about one in every 200 passengers will tap their pass, have it registered but then the gate doesn't open. Leaving them to either jump the gate, or reverse out and go to the manned opening. What compounds this, is that the gate recognises the error and will not register any more swipes for 10 seconds.

To further this, the touch pads are a little particular, preferring that no other proximity devices be with the electronic ticket when the user taps, and that the ticket not be wrapped in any thick materials. So when people put their ticket in the wallet with their bank cards and work swipe cards, it often fails, and that also screws up the flow of passengers. When you have tens of thousands of commuters moving through, this is not going to go well. Again it isn't a problem with technology as you just have to watch how well electronic gates work in other countries to see that some are better than others, or in this case; most are better than ours.

I need to just take a chill pill and relax, but the problem is that there is always an advisable maximum dosage, and I hit my pill limit very quickly on public transport. I need to get my ass in gear and start cycling again.

More grumpy old man

Kids are back at school. They've been back at school for their second week now, so the space and peace on the public transport has vanished as the children now seek to get to and from school. Now I'll state right up front here that this isn't a problem with just children, as I see adults do the exact same thing, but because the bus I catch in the morning goes past two rather popular high schools, it means that easily 80% of the passengers are kids.

The buses have the same configuration that they have in most countries of doors at the front and at the middle. When people get on and have to stand, they frequently tend to congregate one of the doors as no one wants to be stuck halfway up the aisle when their stop arrives. The front door is less of an issue as everyone has to get on there, so the issue here is the middle door. So the sequence that leads up to my grumpy rant today is this:

• Some people get on, and move along to the middle of the bus so they are near the centre doors.
• More people get on, move along and stand near the people at the centre doors.
• Repeat, until the bus arrives to where I get on.

By this stage, the group of standing people now back up to the front doors. The people standing have their room, so they aren't applying pressure for people to move up, and the people in the centre are insulated by the crowd, so they don't hear the driver urging people to move up, and they are also don't see (or its easier to pretend to not see) that people can not get on anymore.

The killer though, is that the standing room extends to the back of the bus. So there is capacity for another 12 adults to get on if everyone shuffles up.

A couple of days ago I finally reached the point where I can't avoid the fact that I need to do something rather than just whine about it here. So I now yell down the bus to get the rugrats to move along so we can all get on. Annoyingly, my first day of beginning this, I also had to yell at the driver to re-open the doors as a lady didn't make it to the centre doors in time to get off. A lot of yelling that day. But its a chance to begin a new chapter in my life of 'the real grumpy Kingston'.

Get off my lawn.

Watch out for that.... tree

My skateboard is a little different most, mainly because it has drum brakes integrated with the rear truck. If you search google for skateboard brakes, you'll see that quite a number of people have enquired about it at various times and there have been a number of attempts at filling that need with various degrees of practicality.

http://www.longboardshop.de/shop/product_info.php?cPath=62_213&products_id=2158
Interestingly, there's even a few YouTube videos showing how to make similar brakes as this out of PVC plumbing pipes. Nasty engineering, and with either the professional assembly or the PVC version, both mean you now have even more holes in your skateboard.

http://skatebrake.com/kits.html
But I don't like the idea of the cable flapping around. It works well though, and is a much more affordable price.

http://brakeboard.com/
This is what I'm actually using. They're expensive, I won't deny that. But they work well, and there is no odd pipes or pistons sticking out from the skateboard for you to trip on or to get snagged on bumps.

There's a bunch of techniques for braking without some fancy assembly, but they really only work when you've got space and on a fairly smooth predictable surface. Around town, its much harder to use foot brakes or slides to take off speed at a moment's notice. Just this morning the brake saved some lady who suddenly decided to sprint for the bus and ran straight in front of me.

The brake is unusual enough that I'm getting comments and looks quite a lot of the time on the train, and even recently had one guy walk into a sign because he was more focussed on trying to get a look at the brake assembly than where he was going.

That event really made my day.

Ooooo, Shiny!

Often when you get into a car and drive, you don't check stuff. Most people don't even check the fuel gauge, let alone more critical stuff like oil levels, coolant, braking and steering fluids, tyre tread, air pressure, state of the spare wheel, tools for changing said spare wheel.

I can't blame them, you just start to assume as it takes a modest effort to go through all those checks, its dirty work, and if anything does go wrong; then it'll be expensive and inconvenient, but unlikely to be catastrophic (compared to an aircraft, for example). When its your own car, you also get to know its state, and assume that your periodic servicing, plus regularly being around it, will mean that you'd notice if something had degraded unexpectedly. I know that's not the case for everybody though.

When you pick up a vehicle from a rental yard or vehicle dealership, you just naturally assume that various maintenance and safety checks have been done by them. At dealerships, especially the larger ones which are part of an overall corporation, you begin to expect they mean it when they say that all their vehicles are well maintained and of high quality. Barring fuel levels, I should be able to just grab the key and go.

I got a surprise when I was told to go refuel one of the utes in our yard. It was a Ford Falcon 1-tonner, so a 4Litre inline 6, and these are popular with the lads as the rear end is easy to spin when the tray is empty. It seems my dealership wasn't always regular with checking tyre wear as even taking off from rest at the lights was a tricky event. The ute had to be slowly eased into motion if you didn't want to end up sliding into the next lane. When I finally got back to the yard, a quick inspection confirmed that the rear tyres had both been polished smooth from past over-enthusiastic use.

No wonder that the young sales guys loved taking that car home.