I just realised that it's now Tuesday 17:31 and I've still got to write another 200 words, arranged in a fashion that makes clear and concise logical sense and has something tech-related. So, this weeks article is about problems. When faced with a problem you usually have two options; ignore the problem and use enough resources to live around it, or face the problem and use enough resources to solve it. I realise my insight is a tad generalised (and the phrasing probably has something to do with the fact that I've been playing a lot of Age of Empires lately), but has held true for just about every case I've thrown at it. ^[1]

Unsurprisingly, you've probably come to the same conclusion at some point in your life as well (although you probably didn't word it as eloquently as I did). And yet, many people don't accept it, not foreseeing the cost of resources to live around an issue. I could list examples such as doing homework before the due date as opposed to right before the due date, but instead I'm going to dive right for the more technological issue; data backups. Drives are cheap and getting cheaper. And yet I look at how many people take regular backups and am still amazed at how few take regular backups. Remember people; data is cheap, time is expensive.

Now, in life (of Comp. Sci.) we also have the problems of the more interesting kind. The Programming Competition kind. Congratulations are in order for the solo guy who just wanted a T-shirt (which he received), the DARTH VADER team (esp. Daniel for the pelvic thrust after solving a hard question), and to everyone else who competed and managed to beat agp (Almost Grey Power), who despite being senior programmers, were only able to solve the 3 easiest questions.

Finally, I've been alerted by my girlfriend that blue LEDs are pretty. Indeed they are. But that's still no excuse for them glaring in my eyes when I'm trying to listen to music. I've also been told by randoms that I use a lot of brackets in my articles (mostly to extend a point while keeping within an acceptable sentence length). To this, I can say "kiss my ass", as I like to use excessive punctuation where appropriate. It makes the English programming language a lot more fun, like php.

[1] Of course, some of the more insightful philosophers reading my column would be quick to point out "Hah! You forgot, you can throw resources at the problem before the problem occurs, adding a third option!" and would be right, except that you'd be ignoring that you've faced the problem, it's just you faced it before the problem became a problem.

Let's start this week off with a little quiz. When buying an expensive piece of electronics with your freshly borrowed "course related costs", do you expect to find;

1. An Apple-inspired design
2. Blatant branding to remind you it's not made by Apple
3. Blue LEDs, which indicate that it's obviously high-tech

If you answered C, you deserve a slap, as you're the reason why myself and many others like me (i'll explain) are either;

1. Voiding warranties by opening up things and replacing the LEDs with a more sensible colour
2. Putting electrical tape over all the blue LEDs

So, for those who don't quite get my rampage, let me explain something. Blue light has a short wavelength, which makes it really hard for your eye to focus on. So, for an ambient light, like the type which alerts me to know my speakers are on, blue light is really bad in terms of overall interface design. It's irritating to the eye. There's a reason why you don't normally see blue lights in car dashboards; it's dangerous, especially for night driving. And yet, over the last few years, consumers have come to expect lots of blue LEDs in their products, because it looks cool.

If done correctly, there's nothing wrong with using colour lights. But please, why do you think it's necessary to shine blue light in my eyes when I'm just trying to listen to music? Not to mention, not only does it look "high-tech" to consumers, but marketers have also decided that it sounds high-tech as well. BlueTooth headset anyone? Maybe a Blu-Ray player? When will the madness end!

But, then again, most of the tech world is crap, and if it wasn't for the sea of crap we wouldn't have the shining stars. So really, what can one really expect from our generation?

About 15 mins ago, I managed to do something utterly stupid (it involved VMware snapshots) and reverted my server to the state it was in as of 31 March. Notice how it only took me 15 mins to get this post out?

Before you start thinking it, no, this post doesn't just exist to boost my ego (I already know I rock). As I keep telling the masses; everyone needs backups. Drives are cheap these days. Storage on Amazon S3 is dirt cheap. Whatever solution floats your boat, make sure you're taking regular dumps of your data.

As those who know me know, I work for a large international communications company. Not only do I get to have a part-time job doing something that I enjoy, but I also love the side benefits; being able to roll into work whenever I want, or just working from home and proving the myth that pants are optional. But this week, I'm not just sitting at my desk, trying to draw inspiration while hard at work. This week it's all around me. This week I'm in a communications room, in Tonga.

To cut a long story very short, a server that helps run one of the Tongan mobile networks died. It was supposed to be a simple job; fly in Wednesday, change the CPU, relax and fly out Saturday. In my urge to screw my carbon footprint this year and get another stamp for my passport, I didn't stop to think I'd be pulling my hair out trying to fix hidden problems, but like all things, nothing is simple. My colleague and I are now waiting for assistance from our advanced technical support centre. As usual, Murphy's law prevails.

(picture me with greasy hair putting my head in hands and rubbing eyes)

Since my first dial-up account for my 12th birthday, a decent internet connection has never been more than a short maneuver away. And suddenly I find myself in a place where, according to statistics, most people don't use the internet regularly and many have only heard of it. I knew this was the case, but it's a major shock to realise how lucky we are to have this resource, but how quickly we are to complain about it.

I'm also amazed with how loyal customers can be. Despite fierce advertising from the competition, the incumbent telco is keeping a strong hold on their market out of pure choice by the customers. According to locals, everyone knows the competition is cheaper and provides better mobile signal coverage, but the audio quality is poorer and it's not Tongan owned, and so few people permanently switch.

It's amazing what a short airplane ride can do to one's perspective. So next time you're ready to complain about how your is, or how it costs "too much", just spare a moment to think about how lucky you are that you've come to expect the world. Read that last sentence a couple times.

I have a domain. Big surprise. What may come as a surprise to some people though is that up until a month ago I used Yahoo Domains, and until today, I had no complaints.

A month ago I noticed Yahoo was increasing their renewal price to $34.95. I had already planned to move to Godaddy this year due to their sponsorship of Diggnation (go Diggnation!), so while being a little more motivated because of the price difference, I thought little of it. I switched, and have had no problems. I clicked all the buttons I could find in Yahoo, and thought it was all done, as I had no more correspondence from them.

Until I check my credit card bill today, and notice a nice $50 NZD charge attributed to my domain. WTF!?!?!?! Yahoo still wants money for a service I'm not using!!!

Yahoo has really screwed up this past year, and I can only hope the next .com burst will finally pop the bubble on the company that really doesn't care about customers.

Eleven (11) days ago (relative to publishing), while scoffing down the excess amount of pizza available at the Nexus contributor meeting, I found a copy of Nexus, issue five (5) from 2005 (two thousand, five). For those not 4th year or older, it was an issue dedicated to nerds and nerdihood. Josh then proceeded to point out the nerd figurine atop the arcade machine, and at that point I nearly cried when I saw it had been disfigured.

One of the articles was what it is like to be a nerd. As I sit in one of my COMP papers, looking around for my girlfriend's sister's boyfriend who is supposedly also doing this paper (that said I've never seen him in here...), it gives me pause to think of how far we've come over the last few decades. Nerding has really become an accepted part of society, or at the very least we're no longer at the bottom (to which we owe the emo and emo-esque crowd for displacing us up the chain). But, before I get all boring and philosophical, I call to enlighten all Level one (1) and higher nerds;

For those not in the know, the new library that the uni is building actually has less space for books than the current library (read: Wintec Student Hub). As such, books that are "of no value" to the uni library are going to be stored by Crown Relocations while the new building is built, and afterwards will be destroyed. Most of the books on this list haven't been checked out in a a few years, and are deemed to have no or little significance. That said, at the SCMS BoS meeting, a few interesting titles were brought up which have geek cultural significance.

These titles include books written in the 1980s (nineteen eighties) about AI and one that was written by two NZ computer science professors. For nostalgic types these are the goldmine collection, and it's a shame we don't have storage capacity. The most interesting fact about this disposals process however is that departments will not be able to take these to-be-destroyed books and put in their offices, tearooms, private libraries etc. If you're interested you'd better get in contact with someone from the library (sorry, didn't catch any names. To quote former editor Roz; "This is professional journalism").

If you're coming here to watch me dance... Sorry, but you're about to be disappointed. I'll upload it to YouTube hopefully tonight.

My room is an absolute mess. Normally I have crap piled on my desk, but today the crap has found it's way to the floor. Unlike some days though, today is a particularly good day, as it just concluded a weekend that I look forward to: the World Cyber Games NZ Qualifier (aka xLAN).

For those not in the know, it's an annual event held in Auckland. The winners of some selected tournaments go on to compete in the APAC finals, and then the world finals (this year held in Germany). It's held on the weekend before the second semester starts back, people come on Friday and leave Sunday afternoon. Sleeping is optional, and very few people get over 12 hours of it. Many cans and cans of energy drinks are consumed. This year we had 760 people, so after crew, tournament computers and expo people, about 850 computers. About 900 amps of power was being constantly used, and you thought your last power bill was bad!

It's not all tournaments though, as many people come to just have a few fun games with their friends. And not to mention, there are quite a few of us from waiKato who are crazy enough to volunteer, but we all love it. Especially when Zapman (aka Daniel (congrats, 4th ever plug!)) starts to be... himself. I'm the network administrator, and It's no small job running an enterprise grade network comprising of computers you've never seen or configured before.

I strongly suggest anyone with an interest in computer gaming to come along next year, although you have to get in quick as seats sell out quite quickly. A splendid time is guaranteed for all. Ok, I'm going to end it here before my brain really goes to mush from tiredness (according to Google Docs this is 7th grade level writing... I'm very disappointed). And, finally, yes I did dance again. 4 times. Only one of them was any good IMO, I was very disappointed in myself, but if you wanna come back to my site in a few days, and I'll of hopefully uploaded it by then.

We fellow geeks generally tend to stick to the internets, after all, happiness is a warm mouse. But every now and then, we take a venture outside with a little help from our friends. Ventures like the SCMS pub crawl for example, is generally accepted as an enjoyable outing, and a splendid time is guaranteed for all.

But recently, there has been another reason for us to emerge from our darkened rooms; Geohashing. Simple description; people go to random locations around your local area every Saturday. Long, nerdy description (for geeks who don't follow XKCD); First you find your graticule (the 1°x1° geographical co-ordinate, i.e. waiKato is -38,175) then you take the opening value of the Dow Jones, MD5 it, split into two 16-bit values, convert to binary and append it as the decimal point to your graticule and voila, you have a location. All you need is to find your coat and grab your hat, and hopefully a crowd of people turn up (for the benefit of the environment, you should catch the bus).

To give you an idea just how vast an area is covered, the area around waiKato extends from Te Uku (2/3 way to Raglan) to just beyond Waihi, and then from Papakura down to Te Awamutu. A lot of this area is private property and some of it ocean, and so it's not always feasible to make it to a point. And of course, being a fairly recent concept, it's not incredibly popular with those of waiKato yet. So far there have only been 3 known geohashes here; twice by a guy who likes to wear pirate gear (InvaluableKiwi; congrats on my 3rd ever plug!), and once by myself and my girlfriend.

So, would you like a bit of adventure on any given Saturday at 4pm? We've got a Facebook group going (search for NZ Geohashers), or read the wiki at http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/. Who knows, if the Nexus ed and the rest of the club band is as keen as they claims they are, you might even score a t-shirt or something. Hell, I might even score a t-shirt or something... Final note; Across the Universe, like most things with Evan Rachel Wood, is a movie that you should watch at least once. Now. But before this Saturday.

Ok, I have a little more time and brain function to type now...

For those not in the know, I'm the network admin for the biggest LAN party in NZ, The World Cyber Games NZ Qualifier. It's a big job that involves lots of sleep depravation, but it's fun in a sick way. It started at 12:30 on Friday (today), and will go till Sunday. Here are a bunch of photos, and maybe tomorrow I'll post some more...

It's been a hectic few days. To start of this picture trail of some of my experience, I think the most fitting is an image of how my flat looked the night before setup day. In this picture you should see a switch, my laptop, my server, my HP 90/700 terminal, 4x Cisco switches resting on a firewall, 1 massive switch, another terminal, and Jono (aka Sheep) on my laptop configuring the switch.

Next up is two photos of the WCG banner and TelstraClear Pacific banner. Just to prove we made it.

And the communications room at TelstraClear Pacific stadium, the place where we ran our 100m ethernet internet link out of, as well as patch to the rest of the building...

My laptops and Jono...

My 42" plasma, which displays a graph of the internet usage, as well as a warning to n00bs...

The lights of a switch.

Endless rows of people... (760 total really)

So ya, thats what I'm up to this weekend. Don't blame me if I don't text back, I'm busy blocking network ports.