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Visit Bali!

A few weeks ago, I returned from a wonderful vacation on Bali with my wife. Bali is beautiful and so are its wonderful, hospital people. Especially the children. I’ve never seen so many smiling children (and parents) before. This picture was taken at a temple ceremony which I had the honor to attend. Actually, my wife, a lone fellow from switzerland and me were the only non-local people among hundreds of friendly and welcoming balinese. Which brings me to the point of this post.

The economy of Bali relies heavily on tourism. But since the bombings in Kuta, tourism really has taken a beating. We heard a lot about people not coming to Bali for fear of more terrorist attacks. Well, what can I say. I am pretty sure that the risk of having a fatal car accident on the drive to the airport is far higher than the risk of being scratched by a bomb on Bali. Kuta really isn’t why you want to visit Bali, anyway – any other place on Bali is nicer.

So if you like Asia, like to immerse yourself into a wonderful culture, like nature and diving, do yourself and the Balinese some good: visit Bali.

Pictures tell more than a thousand words though, so check out our pics on my wifes flickr account. Kevin also has some nice Bali takes.

A note to our mobile phone manufacturers

Recently, scientific research suggested, that the human brain already adapted to the age of one thumbed SMS typing. Unfortunately, the evolution of our physiology is not as fast. I guess you counted on our anatomy following suit so that you wouldn’t have to worry about proper ergonomics. Regrettably though, a thumb is still more adapted to climbing trees and grabbing clubs. And mine aches after typing an SMS on my mobile phone. I just recently got myself a Nokia E60. A rather large mobile phone with comparably big keys. Still, the ergonomic problem remains, as you can see in the picture. In order to operate all buttons, I have to position the phone on my fingers, away from my palm and still have to bend my thumb considerably. In short: it is uncomfortable. Obviously typing ergonomics is not a priority for you guys, or is it? Increasing the size of the display seems to be. O.k. I love the display on the E60, I have to admit. But big displays tend to leave less space for the keypad. Furthermore, the big displays pushed the keypad right to the bottom of the phone, which makes my thumb bend even more. Also en vogue are smaller keys and even full QUERTZ/Y keypads, which introduce an element of chance when trying to hit the right key. I tested one of these phones and the tip of my thumb easily covered four keys. Here is my suggestion: please put the keypad on top of the display. The phone can rest in the palm of the hand and the thumb can operate much easier. It will not obstruct the display, even when hitting the lower part of the keypad. Garmin, a manufacturer of handheld GPS devices designs its gadgets like this for years. They are, of course, less bound by the parameters of fashion and coolness, I have to admit. The overall physiological problem remains, of course. At least until you finally invent the wireless brain interface … then we’ll probably have to worry more about degeneration of the whole body due to lack of workout.

Where will Google go?

Or maybe I should ask: "Where would I go without Google?". Everytime Google creates a new app like Google Mail, Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Calendar and just recently Google Code, I feel like I get more and more dependent on Google. Way too dependent. As a software engineer, I value a good, useful piece of software with a clean and usable UI. If I can use that software everywhere where there is access to the internet, well thats just great. I think companies who put out such products should be supported. Google should be supported. Just that I "pay" Google not with money but rather with information about myself. Sometimes I think I’d rather pay them money to use an excellent service such as Google Mail if in turn I can keep the illusion of privacy. How long can a listed company like Google refrain from doing evil, being in posession of enormous amounts of valuable information about every aspect of our lives? I don’t know. Probably not forever. After all, Google is controlled by human beings and is profit oriented. But would alternatives like Yahoo, AOL or any other competitor be any better? I guess not. If you look at it from a risk management perspective, though, things change a little. The probability of "going evil" might not be much different for Google than for Yahoo. Risk, however, is the product of the probability of the risk event (Google/Yahoo doing evil) and loss (private information being misused). I daresay that given the breadth and depth of information that Google owns, the potential loss would be bigger than it would be for any other of its competitors. The most frightening scenario for me personally is the american government getting access to Googles database, e.g. for reasons such as national security. There are other scenarios, of course. The most well known was put together by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson in their brilliant docu fiction called EPIC. It paints a rather frightening picture of the future path of Google and its impact on Journalism. The docu has gotten so popular, there is even a german version available, now. Definitively worth seeing. Markus Breuers (german) blog also offers a lot of thought about Google.

Yet another hobby

After a couple of years devoid of any kind of workout, lots of chocolate bars and other unhealthy stuff, my belly finally started to show. O.k., nothing out of the ordinary for men at my age, I thought. If only there wasn’t the bad conscience nagging in the back of my head each time when I look, much less nibble at a piece of chocolate. It really takes away all the chocolate fun.

Procrastinator that I am, I hoped that this mental state would take care of the problem all by itself. But when I discovered that I couldn’t see the lower part of my seatbelt anymore when driving in my car I decided that I was wrong. Something needed to be done here. DAMN.

It so happens that I discover a new hobby for myself every 6 months in average. Model flying was the last one and that was already a year ago. A new hobby was overdue and so I thought, why not choose a sport this time. Since the slopes of the Taunus, a low mountain range, start right at my doorstep and jogging, walking and hiking-in-something-less-than-real-mountains are out of the question, Mountainbiking was the obvious choice for me.

A week ago, my new Mountainbike (a Specialized Stumpjumper) arrived and I have spent a lot of hours on it and climbed a number of local hilltops (about 600 – 700 m up from where I live). Besides the aching back, it is big fun. I’m not so sure my belly changed much, yet, but the bad conscience is gone already …

g16g?

I guess that name needs a little explanation. I tried all sorts of names for a while. They were uniformly way too long, too boring and unrememberable. O.k., g16g is also boring and unrememberable but at least its short. Anyway, here’s the explanation. Ever heard of i18n? It’s what we computer geeks write when we’re to lazy to write the word internationalization (a technology to make applications and websites multilingual). We love acronyms and abbreviations so we’ve invented a fancy technology to turn every word with more than 3 letters in an unrecognizable abbreviation. Just take the first letter, append the number of characters between the first and the last letter and then the last letter. g16g is the result of applying this nonsense to my first and last name + “blog” (not counting the spaces). Way cool, huh? No? Well, I guess we have a weird sense of humour …