Latest Posts

• On Design. Familiar Operation, Familiar Failure.

  A few months ago I bought an Amazon Kindle to try to answer for myself whether or not it’s better than reading books on paper?

  I love reading a book on paper: I know how it works. And I can do it anywhere, if I have my book. I just open it up, and it ‘works’ : the book is just there. There’s no magic buttons to press, no batteries to charge. The only thing to worry about, I guess, is tearing the book apart, or getting it drenched.

  The Kindle? Flipping to the next page is a bit funny (You press a button on the side), and you kind of have to charge it every few months. You press a button to turn it on, but otherwise, it looks like a printed page more or less. Less, but that’s not such a big deal. It’s ‘good enough’.

  Except, well, it fails in ways that a book doesn’t.

  A few weeks ago I found myself standing outside in -15^C temperatures. I wanted to read while waiting outside in this weather, and all of a sudden, after a few pages… my Kindle rebooted. It turns out that reading in sub zero temperatures doesn’t work yet. Who would have thought? I was kind of annoyed, but hey, now I know.

  So, I started wondering. What happens in failure. People design for making sure that something works as expected, but I found this failure really perplexing. I’d love to have “planned failure” a more important design aspect. A book keeps working in cold weather, why doesn’t my kindle?

  To me this was as if my Prius didn’t work in the rain. Or my espresso machine wouldn’t work on Tuesdays.

• Dealing without.

  Almost all the work I do requires a pretty steady internet connection. WIthout it, I can’t check email, write emails, write code, write designs, talk to colleagues. Nothing. Of course, when you need something as much as this, it’s fun to see how people deal with not having it.

  A couple of years back, in Sydney, there were a few afternoons where there was no connection from my office whatsoever. The story was completely standard. First, everyone panicked; there were still deadlines, of course. Frustration. Anger. Only after an hour or so did people relax, and say: screw it, let’s go to the pub.

  What’s the key to happiness in this? To avoid the angry hours. I think this is what buddhism is all about. Accepting loss. Now, when I don’t have internet on a train, for a minute or an hour, rather than fret about it, I relax, accept it as part of the job, and read.

  In the last hour I read 100 pages of a great new book by Haruki Murakami. Written a blog post. smiled. Some around me struggled, smacked their keyboards, or, who knows, maybe gave up and went to the pub.

• Building Bridges, or Apples and Oranges.

  I think that bridges are interesting. A lot of the time we think they’re really pretty, but there’s more to the story. The Brooklyn Bridge is famous for being the uniting feature of New York, and its amazing construction. The man in charge, Washington Roebling, famously suffered decompression sickness during construction, and, unable to move, watched and supervised the construction of the bridge from his apartment window.

  I want to compare the construction of two bridges I find incredible for different reasons.

  The Sydney Harbour Bridge was controversial for its costs while being built. So many odd things about the construction linger. Firstly, it was the longest bridge of its kind when constructed. Then, the huge stone towers on either end of the bridge are just cosmetic—The real supports are on a large ‘king pin’ at either end. Then, the way it was built: every rivet was handmade and heated, at various points on the bridge. The steel was brought from the UK, with a steelyard at the north end of the bridge. That is an incredible distance to bring steel over, and even more incredible, is that Australia is a huge iron and steel exporter now. The noise from the steelworks angered Sydneysiders, and the site is now an olympic swimming pool and a fun park.

  The other bridge is the Kaibab Suspension Bridge. It’s a little footbridge, 130 metres long, 1.5 metres wide, over the Colorado River, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It was finished in 1928, 4 years before the Sydney Harbour Bridge, so it was built at the same time. The Grand Canyon is a damn remote place, and every single bit of this bridge was taken, by foot, or mule from the top of the canyon. That is 21 kilometers away, and 1.8 kilometers further up. Incredibly, for instance, the cables for the bridge, some 550ft long, were carried on the shoulders of men from the top of the canyon to the bottom. It took six weeks to take one cable, on the shoulders of about a hundred men, from top to bottom. All of this was built by hand, because there is no food, water, electricity, gas or any sort of infrastructure.

  I find the human endeavor in the Grand Canyon bridge so impressive. More than any large bridge around.

Blog Posts

• 12 Feb 2012 » On Design. Familiar Operation, Familiar Failure. – View Comments
• 06 Feb 2012 » Dealing without. – View Comments
• 04 Feb 2012 » Building Bridges, or Apples and Oranges. – View Comments
• 02 Feb 2012 » Moneyball—Why only for sport? – View Comments
• 01 Feb 2012 » The new Facebook IPO – View Comments
• 16 Oct 2011 » Hiking in Utah, the real formative memories. – View Comments
• 02 Apr 2011 » Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo - A broadway review. – View Comments
• 19 Jan 2011 » Time Stands Still — A broadway review. – View Comments
• 27 Nov 2010 » A Rose for Milton? – View Comments
• 12 Oct 2010 » Discovering the directory again. – View Comments
• 05 Mar 2010 » Review of The Belvoir St Theatres production of That Face (from the Royal Court) – View Comments
• 28 Nov 2009 » One of those little things I see, and I don't want to forget. – View Comments
• 25 Nov 2009 » A short story adaptation – View Comments
• 22 Nov 2009 » Bad ideas for the internet, number 1. – View Comments
• 17 Nov 2009 » Writing a quick Go package, as an experience – View Comments
• 04 Nov 2009 » Happy Days by Sam Beckett At the Belvoir – View Comments
• 26 Oct 2009 » The hardest part of writing is … – View Comments
• 16 Oct 2009 » God of Carnage, the STC production – View Comments
• 27 Sep 2009 » Super Size Me, The real experimental protocol – View Comments
• 31 Aug 2009 » Gethsemane, The Belvoir upstairs production – View Comments
• 26 Aug 2009 » The Lonesome West, at the Belvoir. – View Comments
• 24 Aug 2009 » Saturns Return, my review from the 2009 Production – View Comments
• 19 Aug 2009 » Follower counts, and do they matter? – View Comments
• 14 Jul 2009 » Comment Fragmentation, the result of content aggregation – View Comments
• 13 Jul 2009 » Review of 'The Promise' at Belvoir St Theater. – View Comments
• 12 Jul 2009 » My quick review and overview of PubSubHubBub – View Comments
• 05 Jul 2009 » The Triumph of Software over everything in consumer computing.. – View Comments
• 26 Jun 2009 » Back at home in Oz – View Comments
• 24 Jun 2009 » August, Osage County At the Music Box in New York – View Comments
• 21 May 2009 » When the Rain Stops Falling At the Drama Theatre. – View Comments
• 19 May 2009 » Erlang preview, And what makes content creation so hard? – View Comments
• 17 May 2009 » Half Marathon Afterglow. – View Comments
• 16 May 2009 » Good books - whats the line? – View Comments
• 15 May 2009 » Whats the answer? – View Comments
• 14 May 2009 » Back to business – View Comments
• 28 Apr 2009 » Kafkas Metamorphosis at the Sydney Theatre (All the way from Iceland?) – View Comments
• 20 Apr 2009 » The wonderful world of Dissocia – View Comments
• 19 Apr 2009 » Kafkas Monkey - a real letter to the academy. – View Comments
• 04 Apr 2009 » Get Smart, Whats wrong with it? – View Comments
• 02 Apr 2009 » Public transport rant of the day. – View Comments
• 31 Mar 2009 » Ladybird, the 1st BSharp play in 2009 – View Comments
• 29 Mar 2009 » The Man From Mukinupin, A Belvoir Production. – View Comments
• 28 Mar 2009 » A Reservoir sampling server for erlang, written as a gen_server. – View Comments
• 26 Mar 2009 » Travesties @ The Drama Theatre – View Comments
• 24 Mar 2009 » Concussion—The Wharf Theatre. – View Comments
• 09 Mar 2009 » What do Facebook Search results do? – View Comments
• 07 Mar 2009 » Dear Discount Fruit and Vegetable Shop. – View Comments
• 03 Mar 2009 » Downtime sucks! – View Comments
• 27 Feb 2009 » Junk Mail Targeting—How much is there. – View Comments
• 23 Feb 2009 » Creative Commons for Australian Beginners – View Comments
• 19 Feb 2009 » Tuesdays with Morrie @ The Ensemble Theatre. – View Comments
• 15 Feb 2009 » The Holiday @ The Griffin Theatre. – View Comments
• 14 Feb 2009 » Hooray for Valentines day. – View Comments
• 12 Feb 2009 » The Removalists at the Wharf Theatre. – View Comments
• 11 Feb 2009 » Defining the 'Personal Pub Crawl' – View Comments
• 10 Feb 2009 » Double Checked Locking: keep it volatile & above 1.5 – View Comments
• 09 Feb 2009 » Trying something new. – View Comments
• 09 Feb 2009 » Baghdad Wedding @ Belvoir: A quick review. – View Comments