Sometimes I forget that maybe I should snap a picture now and then that isn’t of an inanimate object or static scene. And although my cheap Nokia camera phone takes terrible photos it’s better than nothing, and I always have it on my person, so I think I shall try to use it more often.

Here’s Sandy and I listing badly atop Mount Eden on a freezing day in the middle of Auckland. The strange painterly effect in the background is due to the image compression used by the phone, not any post-processing on my part. I picked this shot because my head doesn’t look five times bigger than hers, due to a trick where I am actually standing three feet behind (a technique known as forced perspective ).

Behold the technofix to my terrible lack of will to give up smoking!

I ordered this thing from China last Monday and it arrived just yesterday. It is the Super Cigarette, a fabulous little gadget which features psuedo-smoke, glowing tip, and last but by no means least, nicotine!

The second image shows size compared to a regular cigarette, and you can see it’s kind of jumbo by comparison (which makes me think I should have got one that looks like a small cigar instead).

The third image shows it fully disassembled. The long white bit is a lithium battery (one of two supplied) with an LED tip, the silver part is an atomizer/nebulizer, the small orange bit is a capsule with a sponge containing nicotine + glycol solution, and the black thing in the final panel is the charger. One capsule/cartridge is supposed to be roughly equivalent to a pack of cigarettes, and at less than a dollar a pop that’s a rather big saving right there.

To use, you just suck on it and some ingenious electronics atomize the solution into the airstream so you inhale what seems like a mouthful of smoke (while the tip glows red; very cute). The taste is almost nonexistent, but if I had to describe it it would be like having licked your fingers after rubbing baby oil on them. You can achieve gobs of smoke if you want, and there appears to be no substantial odor generated, although there is a very slight musty odor which you might recognize from smoke machines, since they use the same chemical. Because there is no combustion occurring the smoke is not actually smoke, but it looks and behaves almost exactly like the real thing. (short video of me puffing on my giant fake cigarette)

… and the past

Behold the solution to my dearth of 1980 Honda Civics!

This is one of those embarrassing purchases that I regretted the moment I committed to… After browsing cars for so long before buying the Lupo I had simply got myself into the habit of scanning the auction site for cars. I saw this 1980 Honda Civic and really liked the color and model, and before I knew it I was bidding on the damn thing, shortly afterwards finding myself the not-so-proud owner of a silly car that I don’t really need.

Unfortunately it is not in quite the pristine condition I had hoped (although it has only done 95000km which is amazing for a car this age) so right now I’m trying to work out how keen I am to spend time trying to fix it up a bit. The main problems are that the brakes are starting to squeak (money) and the doors appear to be badly aligned (time) so I have to slam the crap out of them at the moment to close them properly— It seems I need to refit them, adding some shims to position them correctly (they are about 5mm too far forwards which stops the strikers from enaging the door latches properly).

Its first useful role will probably be as the car in which Sandy learns to drive a manual so she can get her NZ driver’s license, but only after she stops making fun of it.

Since it is an old car with "personality" I think I should probably name it; I am thinking either Bluey, Civvy, or pehaps Shaky, maybe Loudy…

Actually the MacGuffin in question is called the Loom of Fate, but I think Death is punchier.

A member of the ancient fraternity of assassins decodes the name of their next target.

Apart from being the dumbest movie in the history of dumbness, Wanted was actually quite enjoyable. If you can ignore the terrible plot, the terrible acting and the fact that parts of it feel like a ripoff of the Matrix 5 years after everyone else got bored with ripping off the Matrix, it’s kind of exciting sort of… in a morally reprehensibly kind of way.

Spoiler summary

Wanted is all about how much you and I suck for being ordinary, and how much better our lives would be if we went around murdering people at the behest of an ancient loom which acts as God’s answering machine (inexplicably, the names woven into the fabric by the breath of God are interpreted as conferring an execution order, rather than, say, an honorary sainthood). A subplot involves a man fighting to do what’s right and yet never finding the time to send an email or pick up the phone when it would be really frikking useful for him to do so, thus condemning himself and countless others to pointless and bloody deaths. Also, candle-lit baths are apparently incredibly good for you, as is subsisting solely on a diet of pork.

PS: Morgan Freeman has exceeded his movie quota and should be banned from acting for at least a year. It’s just getting ridulous— does he even change his shirt between roles these days?

For the second night in a row I dropped in to a supermarket tonight to pick up some bubble bath, and for the second time I came away empty handed. After scouring the shelves in the bathroom aisle for what must have been nearly 10 minutes, I finally gave up and went and asked a guy if he could show me where the bubble bath was. He made me repeat myself and then led me to the condiments aisle where he pointed at some poppadoms. Awkward. A second attempt and he brought me to some scrubbing brushes and replacement mop-heads… I couldn’t see how that worked at all, so thanked him for his help and moved on.

Anyhow, the point of this story is not to laugh at some poor guy with bad English, rather it is to express outrage at the fact that bubble bath seems to have vanished from the shelves, to replaced by a thousand different scented body washes and shower gels… and this makes me really cross! I can’t actually remember where I got my last bottle from— obviously it wasn’t one of the two major supermarkets I just tried.

Bubble bath solution does not just make bathtime fun, it also makes bathtime more energy efficient by retaining the heat in the bath, and further it stops my bathroom walls from becoming sopping wet with condensation (from all the vapor freely escaping from the surface of the water).

Bubbles make great insulation, in the same way any foam does.

The same principle applies with hot coffee; a coffee with a layer on froth on top gives up its heat more slowly, mostly via radiation and conduction through the sides of the cup, rather than convection and evaporation, which is what occurs without the protecting layer. An added bonus in the case of hot drinks is that the foam layer has a dampening effect on the motion of the liquid underneath, so while I am always spilling my tea when simply crossing the room with it, with a nice creamy latte/cappucino I can pretty much run from the kitchen to my office without spilling a drop.

So remember this next time you imply someone is in some way a ponce for drinking a slightly fancy hot beverage; they may in fact be going with the most practical option.

A nice thing about the iPhone SDK is that it includes an emulator, so even without an iPhone I can still mess around with one (up to a point— no actual GSM/3G/GPS functionality is available for obvious reasons). As well as a slick rendering of the actual iphone itself (not just the screen) the emulator allows you to view horizontally as well (causing Safari and the photo viewer do their animated screen rotations just like on the real thing).

Unfortunately by the time I get around to trying any iPhone development the iTunes App store will no doubt be utterly flooded with garbage (if it isn’t already) and all the good territory will be taken by the people who have a clue.

Some people have asked about the possibility of Drivey on the iPhone, but to be honest I don’t think it belongs there— at least not in its "dreamy" mode. Drivey is not intended as a quick distraction, rather as an immersive experience. Also it would totally eat battery life on a mobile device. It would look pretty cool though. Here’s a mockup just to annoy the people who look at the pictures before they read the text.

Speaking of Drivey, I got some nice feedback recently (I have actually received hundreds over the years; I keep meaning to collect them together and make a best of list to inspire me to pick it up again). I hope A.T. won’t mind me posting this here:

I first tried Drivey about three years ago. Since then, I’ve been through a couple of new PCs (losing the installation along the way), but, feeling all nostalgic, I came looking for Drivey tonight and it’s still one of the finest graphical demos/screensavers/idontknowwhatthehellitisbutiloveit-its I’ve ever seen. Don’t worry about collision detection, or game features: it’s perfect the way it is.

Feedback like this reminds me of what I love about programming— although of course I’m sure many people would disagree that Drivey needs no further work :)

Not a mini— that dream is dead. Instead it’s a 2002 Volkwagen Lupo, a small car of which I had never even heard until I saw this one (and so very sensibly decided to buy it).

Features

• room for two real people in the front and up to three cardboard cutouts in the back.
• MiniDisc player— which is such a relief because I had heard a rumor that the format was dying.
• Airbag brand dashboard and seats
• charcoal and red color scheme— no poxy mid-grey plastic/upholstery
• breathing holes
• cup holders! As someone who has managed to spill coffee on the inside of a windscreen, these bring me great satisfaction.
• no lame-o glove box— who needs those!

I bought it in an online auction* having looked at it in real life for about 10 minutes and driven it back and forth a distance of 2 metres or so. It was pissing with rain during the hours of inspection, so I hoped that not too many people would show up and I might get a better deal with less competition. In the end (ie the last 5 minutes of the auction, of course) it turned out a few others were interested, so I didn’t quite get it for the song I was hoping, but it still felt like a pretty good deal at NZ$6050.

Problems

• Passenger window not working… not sure if this is going to be expensive to repair, but not a huge priority right now (I was aware of it at time of sale)
• Loss of engine power/smoothness after leaving it parked in the rain. This seems to have been a problem with wet contacts/sparkplugs— a few spritzes of WD40 has kept this problem from recurring (Auckland is very soggy lately)
• I still can’t work out how to set the damn clock [UPDATE: see comments] Being an import from Japan (obviously not made there) it did not come with an owner’s manual, and I can’t seem to find an English one online because VW are total dicks like that it seems— Major kudos to anyone who can point me in the right direction there

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* to anyone in Auckland who wants to try their luck with a cheap import: I bought this car through www.oval.co.nz, a business that imports used cars from Japan and sells them directly on TradeMe** without detailing or servicing.

** TradeMe is a daggy but awesome auction site whose popularity has thus far prevented the evil eBay from gaining a foothold in New Zealand.

PZ Myers, evolutionary biologist, outspoken atheist and astonishingly prolific blogger, has done what he recently promised to do in the wake of a kerfuffle about some kid who took communion but didn’t swallow (thereby smuggling out a piece of the flesh of Jesus himself according to Catholic doctrine).

PZ couldn’t believe the fuss (well ok he probably wasn’t so surprised) and promised to do the same himself, prompting a hysterical flurry of pleadings and condemnations for it. Being an atheist (and therefore fashioned of pure evil) he was unmoved by such appeals, and went ahead and did it anyway. Read his report here, along with some interesting references to the slaughter of Jews perpetrated by the Catholic church over the centuries as punishment for the crime of host desecration.

Also fun (although sometimes alarming) to read is the hate mail PZ gets; this is one of the more civilized ones:

You must be the devil himself as even he knows the power in the Holy Eucharist (don’t you dare disparage the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by calling Him Who died for you a cracker!). You must be a freemason, or just a very sick man who needs healing and believe me, I will pray for your conversion. Pray you live to see that day so you can ask Him to forgive you and your uncircumcised heart. Just the mere thought of desecrating the Holy Eucharist is enough to get one into hell, but, maybe that is, for now, the horrible place you are aiming for. I dare you to read about Our Lady of Fatima and the accounts of hell as the three children saw, then, maybe you will change you sick mind. God forgive you. However, it was great that you got many people praying for your conversion since you showed the world how sick you are, and maybe God will convert your hard heart. Pity you. From a lay evangelist who prays for you and the rest of this sick world of secular humanists.

Some level-header Catholic named Mark Shea thinks PZ defiling a wafer is tantamount to breaking into someone’s house and stealing their child’s drawing:

And if you send one of your blog readers into my house to take it, I would be quite justified in calling you a thief who has stolen something precious. I would also be quite justified in defending it and my house from your naked act of aggression.

He also refuses to mince his words:

I won’t mince words. Myers is an evil man. And as evil men, particularly evil intellectuals, tend to be, he is also a mad man as are most of his acolytes and followers. One need only read Pharyngula to know this. Not all atheists are driven mad by their atheism. Many are quite respectable human beings. But those who make it their raison d’etre tend to be made crazy by it. That’s the tragedy of sins of the intellect. They don’t just make you stupid. If you persist in them, and particularly if you persist in them to this degree, they make you crazy.

In Mark Shea’s mind (and those of his perfectly sane acolytes) PZ Myers is an evil mad man because— although he wouldn’t hurt a fly — he would symbolically disrespect a cracker to make a point.

I honestly don’t get it. I can understand someone calling the demonstration obnoxious perhaps, but evil…?

Nothing is sacred. That’s not a lament of our modern times. It’s simply true, and it’s good that it’s true. Nothing is above question or even ridicule. We have ethics, morals and taste; we have no need of the sacred for to live well as humans.

As petrol gets more and more expensive (and we pay a lot more for it in NZ than people do in the US — try $8/gallon), I am thinking it’s time I found a car that’s cheaper to run. I’ve looked at the Prius before, but I have come to think of these as overengineered, being basically two things at once. I don’t really want an electric + petrol vehicle (especially one which isn’t pluggable). And they’re ugly.

I would love it if there was a short to medium range EV on the market here but of course that’s a totally unrealistic expectation and can only happen in the distant future— notwithstanding the fact that individual hobbyists are getting bored with waiting for the market and actually building their own.

So I’m thinking small cars, with small engines. Maybe like the Smart, only less 90s concept-y and more simple. Something like a Mini. Not a mid-life crisis BMW MINI… rather an old Mini, a la Mr Bean. The problem is, I’m not exactly a classic car enthusiast, I just like the look of the things. They are, for want of a better word, cute.

The body panels of the Mark I were so thin as to be virtually transparent, an issue rectified with later models.

I think an old mini makes more sense than, say, an old VW beetle, since the latter is amazingly loud, not known for its excellent handling, and the last time I sat in one it actually caught fire.*

So within a week or so, I expect to be the proud owner of a tiny piece of motoring history… or possibly I will have completely changed my mind and come to my senses.

UPDATE: I have come to my senses. Much as I would like an old mini, they are too expensive (people are asking $4000 - $6000 depending on condition) and they have almost no safety features by today’s standards. Instead I am going to try to get something like the 2002 VW Lupo… which appears to be both extremely economical and safe for its class.

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* The reason for this was that in the VW Beetle the battery was located under the rear seat, and in this instance the insulating cover had slipped such that when I put my weight on the seat the springs beneath pressed onto the battery terminals, electrically shorting them and creating an instant toaster effect which nearly set my arse on fire.