phro in toronto

nearly now

2011-09-09T15:38:00.002-04:00

It's been pretty quiet here lately, but not for a lack of writing. I've been spending some time trying my hand at short / flash speculative fiction on a seperate blog I created for just that purpose. It's mostly nerdy and mostly crime related and mostly just for fun. If that sounds like your sort of thing, by all means stop by.

so that happened

2011-07-28T18:09:00.001-04:00

I recently discussed free weights with a friend who takes his fitness pretty seriously, and I mentioned to him that my apartment building has a modest gym that I hadn't really checked out. He suggested I stop by and take some pics of the equipment so he could judge its worthiness. I looked in on it with cameraphone in hand other day on the way to work, but it was in use so I let it go for a couple days.

Today my friend messaged me when I got home.

Chris 05:23:09 PM
You get them photos?

Rob 05:23:11 PM
Ah fuck.
Aight well I gotta hit the laundry room, I'll detour the gym on the way back.

Chris 05:23:54 PM
Ya, do that.

Rob 05:24:53 PM
But srsly if theres ppl in there I'm not standin around takin pics like a creeper.
I'll be the guy with the laundry detergent and the bleach gettin the fuck outta there.

15 minutes later ...

Rob 05:40:52 PM
So that went well.

I walked in and there were two hot chicks doing some kind of aerobic thing in front of a mirror that pointed at me and a chick on a bike facing the door.

They all stared at me in my work shirt and jeans holding a jug of laundry soap.

At which point I was realizing that I had gone down and forgotten my phone up here.

So they all got an eyefull of a tableau I'm calling: confused idiot with soap.

If I'd had a camera I'd have taken a picture of that, it would have been great I'm sure.

Chris 05:42:52 PM
That is some of the best performance art I've heard of.

Rob 05:43:00 PM
Hahah, maybe I missed my calling?

Chris 05:43:12
Never too late.

see that tall thing over there?

2011-06-17T19:51:00.001-04:00

For almost seven years I've worked about thirty seconds away from the CN Tower. Most of the time I don't pay it much attention, it's just background. Sometimes tourists will ask about it and remind me it's there though. Once in front of Union Station two french sounding girls asked me where the tower was. I pointed at it over a building and said; "walk towards that until you can see the bottom, then go in".

Then I heard about this platform they're opening this summer and I thought yeah that sounds cool, it's pricey but cool. It was initially described like this.

Crazy edge dangling: check. But then I saw this. What that hell is this?

No crazy edge dangling? Meh. Not sure if want. Yo CN Tower, you wanna make money with less safety equipment? Hack your LED's into a pressure plate and rent out a gravity hammer! Worlds biggest high striker? Um, yes!

(actual amount of awesome)

the cut-throat side of the coin

2011-06-15T01:10:00.000-04:00

I'm going to assume right off the hop that you know what a bitcoin is. If you don't, watch this short video and then for a moment just put your first few questions on hold and assume for the sake of argument that it works as advertised, and that there are in fact many people who for various reasons consider bitcoins to be valuable and will happily trade traditional money (about $20 USD / coin at the moment) for them.

In fact, there are really quite a few people investing in bitcoins. If not directly by purchasing them through one of the currency exchanges, or by exploiting classic foreign exchange tactics in a new medium, then indirectly by running dedicated mining computers filled with high end 3d video cards day and night to collect coins. In the last two months bitcoin miners have stripped the commodity hardware market clean of the top performing Radeon 6990 cards. Take a minute and try to find anyone who has them in stock. Search for other models. Try second hand sites. At about $700 USD those top cards alone represent a pretty sizable dollar amount (invest in AMD!?), and of course on today's internet where there's money there are crooks.

While the saber rattlers are all very interested in the issues of drugs and money laundering, the more interesting crooks are taking to their keyboards. For some time there have been reports of bitcoin wallets being lifted via trojan horse, however these were upgraded on Saturday to full accounts of serious coin-jacking ($500k); perhaps following in the footsteps of computer criminals of a more conventional sort.

Such as the fraudsters who started off acquiring individual online banking credentials but soon realized that siphoning the krill of the internet may work for whales like the big botnet operators, but the smaller scamming crews would need to be more strategic to maximize profits. They began hijacking the accounts of entire businesses and found better spoils with less risk.

So on Sunday when someone monitoring the public (and mostly anonymous) bitcoin transaction log noted about $8M USD in coins being consolidated into one account there was of course some speculation that security concerns were a motivating factor. Semi anonymous currency transfers without the fuss of bank security standards, government mandated oversight and fraud reporting, and no knowledge of borders? Oh yeah, strong concerns.

It get's weirder though. As more people throw more mining hardware at the bitcoin network, the difficulty of mining itself increases in response. The system was designed to ensure that a steady stream of coins are mined no matter how furiously people are mining. Because of this it is now quite impractical to mine coins alone with your desktop computer. Well over half the miners out there are pooling their hardware together and splitting the rewards to stay in the game. So while in theory the network is distributed and decentralized, in practice it has about 8-10 heads (pool servers) which can and have been cut off by interlopers.

There are plenty of theories and discussions out there regarding the reasons behind the many attacks against the most popular mining pools, but I think the most obvious is profit. Due to the fact that the network increases difficulty at a slow and predictable rate it is possible for someone with a lot of mining power to double or triple their odds of mining a block of 50 coins by knocking down the top pools at the right moments. Of course, renting a DDoS attack has been cheap for ages, and there's no doubt in my mind one could be purchased for bitcoins today.

The one I haven't seen yet but want to is forced pooling. When web enabled java and javascript bitcoin mining programs were developed, people thought big. "Topple Google's business model, serve a browser based bitcoin miner instead of an ad to monetize your site". The rapid increase in mining difficulty killed that dream quickly, but it may be back in the form of modern browser interfaces to 3d graphics hardware. WebGL and it's bastard nephew WebCL, very new technologies designed to do nifty graphics stuff in your browser, have already been used to implement web based hardware accelerated bitcoin mining software nearly on par with the dedicated mining programs.

At the moment it's limited to specific browsers with specific plugins, but barring a total collapse of the bitcoin market within a couple years as the tech matures into the mainstream it may well become far too profitable not to exploit. Rather than serving drive by downloads of the latest banking trojan, your favourite recently hacked website could be pressing your video card into the service of mining bitcoins for the Russian Business Network right under your nose.

Perhaps the most amusing thing about all this is that Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin whose name is apparently a Japanese synonym for "John Smith" has quietly disappeared.

Drop crazy virtual currency on world.
Vanish silently with big stack of bitcoins.
Profit!!!

they know kung foo

2011-05-29T17:36:00.000-04:00

Like many companies, my employer makes use of RSA SecureID tokens as part of it's security system, so when RSA (one of the worlds largest encryption software vendors) got hacked earlier this year I payed attention. And laughed a little, I mean c'mon, really?

A few days later a memo was circulated around the office reminding all of us cube monkeys to be wary of anyone seeking information about our tokens and describing some enhancements to our security. Based on that and RSA's public statement I, like some others surmised that by finding out the serial numbers of tokens in use the hackers might be able to work out all the one time passwords they would generate without needing access to the token itself.

According to a couple reports (and unfortunately for Lockheed Martin) it seems that guess was correct.

Whoever grabbed the RSA data used it, and likely quite a bit of other dark wizardry to penetrate the networks of one of the most sophisticated technology and aerospace government contractors operating today. Of course, they say that "our systems remain secure; no customer, program or employee personal data has been compromised". But then again, RSA said "we are confident that the information extracted does not enable a successful direct attack on any of our RSA SecurID customers" after their hack.

As of about 20 minutes ago when I logged on to review the memo I mentioned my token was still working fine, but I expect that to stop any moment now. Good thing too, it's pretty beat up. The serial number has rubbed right off so I guess I'm safer than most.

Interesting times indeed.

creative scamming

2011-04-30T16:53:00.000-04:00

I found this interesting. Some scammers are using trojans to inject bogus ads and articles into business sites praising their fake investment portals.

The trojan configuration also targeted sites such as Forbes and Yahoo Finance, injecting fake articles into pages suggesting the sites were partnered with "URS Investments" and were recommended by Forbes and Yahoo and offer links to sign up with the site. Other sites which are targeted by the trojan's configuration include AOL, Amazon, Apple, CNN, Citibank and ESPN

Next stop, injecting bogus stats into popular finance portals, rss feeds, and trading sites to aid pump and dump stock scams. Sound far fetched? Trojans that steal banking credentials and initiate fraudulent transfers have been hiding the rogue transactions from the victims browsers for years.

Some banking Trojans overwrites transactions sent by a user to the online banking website with the criminal’s own transactions. This overwrite happens behind the scenes so that the user does not see the revised transaction values. Similarly, many online banks will then communicate back to the user’s browser the transaction details that need to be confirmed by the user with an OTP entry, but the malware will change the values seen by the user back to what the user originally entered. This way, neither the user nor the bank realizes that the data sent to the bank has been altered.

2011-04-30T16:18:00.001-04:00

usb powered hockey rat trophy

2011-04-24T16:27:00.000-04:00

Yeah you read it right.

Yesterday my dad and I were making our tipsy way home after watching the Jays take a beating at my local bar. On the way in we saw what I guess someone who'd been moving had left by the service entrance to my apartment, boxes and miscellaneous junk. I saw a weird rat statue with a USB cable sticking out of it and thought, whoa, USB powered rat!

Hell yeah!

So I grabbed it and said to pop and incidentally to a neighbor who was waiting for the elevator; "Yo check it out, USB rat statue!"

Dad: "Um, cool?"

We step into the elevator.

Girl: "Er, are you sure that's not just a rat statue with a USB cable hanging on it?"

Me: Pulling a random USB cable free of rat statue, "Um, nope".

So now what do I do with a non USB powered rat hockey trophy? Suggestions welcome.

ferrousy is so a word

2011-04-20T14:43:00.001-04:00

A friend who studies psychology once told me a story about a lecture she attended on the topic of cognitive biases (if that's a new term for you, don't bother finishing this post, read the wikipedia entry right now). I don't recall the specifics, but I think they might have been discussing bias blindspots. The prof was describing how when presented with a generalization about people, an individual may agree that it applies to others but not themselves, using different mental evaluation processes for the two. A student piped up at that moment and said "Yes! My friends do that all the time, I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't!".

Those with an appreciation for irony enjoyed a laugh at her expense and the lecturer carried on.

Today I read this article on PhysOrg and found it interesting but not amusing, until I reached the comments section. The article discusses the research of a woman who "has worked with teens for more than 20 years, conducting hundreds of interviews with boys from 11 to 18" and in so doing reports that as young men become adults they "feel pressure to show their independence and emotional stoicism".

The very first comment which I am all but certain comes from a man reads: "I'll bet that this lady also writes the '100 ways to please your man' articles for those teen magazines. You know, the kind of articles that have no real idea of what they are actually talking about. I always laugh when I hear about a woman claiming to have unraveled the mystery that is man."

I wish I had a witty closer for this, but I'll have to let this Ferrousy speak for itself.

Extreme Iron~~ing~~y

my system for managing passwords

2011-02-19T21:48:00.000-05:00

The perils of password reuse, though known since time immemorial, have been making headlines lately. I would guess that 99% of everyone I know and likely the same percentage of people reading this are guilty of that sin, as was I till I developed a system that works with all devices, involves no software or hardware, does not require writing anything down, and allows me to easily remember dozens and dozens of passwords even if I haven't used them for years.

It works by combining some random but easily remembered made up word with a description of the service I'm logging into. How do you easily remember a random made up word? Originally I chose a poem from a Dr. Seuss book I memorized as a child, but I've since moved to the lyrics of a foreign song that I spelled out using standard characters phonetically. I'll never forget either and the poem is full of bizarre Seuss-isms not found in a dictionary. Anything that's non standard English that you can remember will do the trick, from a limerick to Snoop Dogg lyrics.

Once you've memorized a few sentences or stanzas pick out a handful of the oddest words, apply a healthy dose of leet speak and SensiblE CasE mOdIfIcAtIOns that'll be easy to recall and you should have a good set of five or six base passwords. Now you just need to decide how you're going to describe the service your logging into.

It's a good idea to be as specific as possible, for instance H0ckZ0ckergmail is better than H0ckZ0ckeremail because someday down the line you may decide to open an email account somewhere else. H0ckZ0cker-GM or H0ckZ0cker-GML are even better because if someone suspects you're using a system that incorporates the site name into the password they'll be forced to make more guesses, and the use of a hyphen or other non alphanumeric character to seperate the halves increases the number of required guesses again.

Getting started with this method is just a matter of changing the password for the two or three things you have to log into most, make them things your browser isn't remembering for you like your bank. Once you're in the habit of doing it, switching back to your old re-used password for other things will start to irritate you and you'll change them too. Every six months to a year just change your base word, I do mine every year after my birthday.

There are a couple gotchas. If a service you don't use often decides to change names like Farkie did when it became Gazzump you may have to do some googling if you can't recall it's original name. Also, if your using a service that won't accept the long passwords this method generates I suggest you complain loudly or find a new service.

I hope this helps folks who otherwise wouldn't spend time thinking about this sort of thing. If you happen to be one of those people who's currently thinking "I have nothing of value, hackers aren't going to come after me", then there's not much I can do to help you with your delusions. People in low income neighborhoods may not posses much of value but that doesn't stop break ins, crime for the sake of crime happens every day, there's no reason to make yourself an easy target.

windows 7 hates foreigners

2010-12-01T19:05:00.000-05:00

I had to install a Microsoft OS recently so I could get remote access to work. That being the case I got some Windows 7 action going and for the most part, I don't hate it. It's got a couple MS type irritations; having to screw around to load an unsigned driver was annoying but at least I understand why they did that. What I have yet to understand is the Windows undying devotion to the QWERTY keyboard layout. Yeah it's the most common but there's no shortage of alternatives, and while MS seems to understand people want the choice of something else, they also seem to really want users to hang on to QWERTY despite their stated preferences.

For reasons I can't explain, no matter how completely I remove the US QWERTY keyboard layout, it still shows up in the language bar. So I hide the language bar, no big deal right? Except no matter how many times I disable the hotkeys for switching input languages I still randomly find the keys switching back to QWERTY under my fingers without warning. I've locked myself out of my VPN access to work twice now and at least one website by unknowingly mistyping passwords when my fingers were hitting what I thought were the right keys but which Windows had shuffled on me.

I booted up Ubuntu so I could show a screenshot of how it's done properly, but it seems there is nothing to see. Yeah because when you have only one keyboard layout selected, go figure, the language bar hides itself and the hotkeys disable themselves.

I'll update this if I figure out how to fix things, but in the meantime suggestions are welcome.

/rant.

currency, economics, and trolls

2010-11-20T17:46:00.000-05:00

I recently read on the Pirate Party of Canada forums that the EFF has begun accepting donations in the form of Bitcoins, a form of digital currency that's seen some steady growth of late. I read a little about Bitcoin when it popped up in my newsreader in the summer but having little understanding of either cryptography or economics my interest wandered quickly. When I read through the replies however it seemed some people had strong concerns about such a currency being widely adopted, and one vocal protester seemed well informed on the subject so I began "discussing" it with him. My mistake.

(the troll, do not feed it!)

After a bit of back and forth it became clear that my troll was either unwilling or unable to provide a sound argument for any of his positions that didn't eventually fall back on ubiquitous corporate evil doing and one world governments. Still interested, I took my curiosity to another forum I frequent hoping to find some well reasoned opinions on the matter. During the discourse that took place there I was directed to an interesting paper describing the failure of gold backed currencies, educated about the Nixon Shock, and the foolishness of engaging trolls. (A friend who works in parliament messaged me on Facebook later to advise I run and don't look back "They're all kooks. Flee!").

Normally the story above wouldn't wind up here, but I've included it because since then with a bit of economy on the brain I've been paying more attention to such topics while surfing. There seems to be a lot of interest in alternative open economic models lately that strike me as interesting if a bit over my head. For the curious, here's a brief overview of some of the concepts, a short video about money, wealth, and creation of value including links to several projects in the problem space, and a free book + wiki "The Wealth of Networks" about the influence of social production on markets.

Also worth checking out; DYNDY. I still haven't worked out exactly what it is, but they seem to be sniffing out and examining all manner of alternative and complementary currency systems. Check out this post for an overview of a presentation about themselves at a recent conference in Amsterdam.

I really have no idea what all this buzzing might mean if anything, but I do find it intriguing. If you have any suggestions about reading material pertaining to backed vs fiat economics or alternative models please drop a comment. I am vastly under informed on the topic and would like to change that.

space isn't just big, it's weird too

2010-10-05T20:19:00.000-04:00

Today I found myself reading about Zarmina and how people might one day fling themselves toward it at a large fraction of c by sticking a firecracker worth about 1.8 x 10^25 Joules of energy on the end of the ISS and lighting it up. Cool beans.

This lead me to an interesting clickfest at Wikipedia where I hopped from current and upcoming exoplanet surveys, to finding distances and pinpointing objects with various coordinate systems where I had a flash back to the movie Contact (yes I read the book, of course it was better). I then wound my way round to the bigger items of interest like the age of the universe and the size of the observable universe where I found something crazy. It was so crazy my mind stumbed, fell, got up and dusted itself off then immediately fell again and stayed there in the dirt for a moment trying to decide what to do next.

Now to preface this I should say that I read some time ago that it is thought by some that when travelling the universe, as when travelling the surface of the Earth, you could pick a direction and travel in it and eventually if you kept at it long enough you'd find yourself back where you started. Conceptually it makes sense to us on a planetary scale but I suppose you need a certain amount of years seated before a blackboard discussing planes and vectors and toroids and so on before it starts making sense with the whole universe. I took it at face value that it was one theory that smart folks had given some thought to and went about my business.

Then today I read this:

"It is also possible that the (physical) Universe is smaller than the observable universe. In this case, what we take to be very distant galaxies may actually be duplicate images of nearby galaxies, formed by light that has circumnavigated the Universe. It is difficult to test this hypothesis experimentally because different images of a galaxy would show different eras in its history, and consequently might appear quite different."

Roll that thought around your noodle for a while. Weird right?

Anyway the article goes on to say that this idea was disputed this summer by some very clever sounding folks in their article "Observable circles-in-the-sky in flat universes". If it makes any sense to you by all means please direct me to a pre-chewed version, I haven't the chops for such stuff.

sound reasoning

2010-07-28T08:52:00.001-04:00

Some friends and I were chatting while bringing a few things from their car up to their apartment last night, and having a heated debate when suddenly, shit got real.

him: Oh yeah?

me: Yeah!

him: Wanna bet? How much?

me: Umm ... no?

her: Ohhhh, suddenly he doesn't sound so sure!

him: See as soon as there's money he thinks I'm right. Surprise surprise!

me: Whoa hey wait a minute, I never said I think you're right.

him: So, let's put some cash on it big guy.

me: No see because I suspect I may be wrong, that's not even close to thinking you're right. Different things entirely.

him: You're an idiot.

her: *nods*

I stand by my flawless logic.

rob salmond? omg i know that guy!

2010-07-17T14:34:00.002-04:00

In an effort to become a proper narcissistic jerk, I recently purchased salmond.ca. This should help with the very common problem of people mistaking me for a BC lawyer with three kids or a University of Michigan assistant professor of political science.

All the feeds and bookmarks should now be redirecting to rob.salmond.ca, but for those of you who've been finding your way here by googling "phrostuff" (ahem, mom) you'll want to stop doing that.

If you happen to have found your way here by googling your own surname and are interested in contributing your piece of the Canadian arm of the Salmond family, by all means get in touch and I'll be happy to help.

between learning, school, and education

2010-07-16T04:06:00.000-04:00

Today I stumbled on to a term I'd never heard before: unschooling. While investigating this interesting concept it occurred to me that I've encountered the topic of education quite frequently in the last few weeks. I have probably shared many of the links in this post on facebook, my shared rss items, and twitter, but I'm going to try to collect them and my thoughts here anyway.

I very much enjoyed Seth Godin's discussion of the conspiracy behind the creation of a public school system. (4 mins) I'd never heard any such theory before. I don't know to what extent his books address this sort of issue, if you've read his work please let me know.

Ken Robinson I discovered through his fantastic TED talks (each ~19 mins) on reforming the education system. After watching his latest one a month or so ago I went digging and found this extended version (1h 23m) of it. I have since gone ahead and added a couple of his books to my ever increasing list of Things To Read.

The articles "Consider Dropping Out Of School" a first person account of both doing so and suggesting it to others and "The End Of Men" a fantastic look at the trend of women increasingly edging out men in academia and the workforce both prompted me to get involved in a couple very informative discussions about the value of formal education.

Now, back to the original topic unschooling. There are a couple of good overview articles for those who, like me want an introduction to the idea, but for those interested in the hands on getting the job done info it seems the unofficial go to girl is Sandra Dodd. If you have kids and wish to explore the option give her your ears; you can tell that she speaks with the frankness of a mother who clearly understands the difference between theory and Getting (sh)It Done. Finally if you watch only one video I've posted here, make it Astra Taylor's excellent talk on her experiences in unschooling (~45 mins + Q&A).

I want to say that while I find the concept interesting, in no way do I believe that teachers are somehow doing it wrong. I count several teachers among my friends, including some of my own teachers who I've maintained a friendship with since quitting school. I will say that it seems when I ask these friends about work that the bulk of the conversation has to do with the mechanics of teaching either large groups of kids, or specific problem children. It feels to me that while the work of a teacher is genuinely where the rubber meets the road, in terms of education as a larger system they are not the ones at the wheel.

I'll finish with this off with one of the most hurtful memories I have of high school. In my first year I had a cool young math teacher whose opinion I valued highly. One day he started a discussion with the class regarding a TV special he'd seen about a young girl who could perform astounding feats of arithmetic in her head. "The way she learns", he said "is incredible, it's like she just has to know!"

I immediately blurted out, "I know how she feels, I feel that way too sometimes!" thinking of books I'd read, things I'd researched, experiments I'd done. I was excited to learn that the feeling was shared by others.

He gave me this genuinely mournful and dismissive condescending look and slowly shook his head. You know the look. The one that smacks of their wisdom and your naiveté. "No Rob, it's not the same". He changed the subject. My joy of learning simply wasn't as good, or as worthy as this savant's was, end of story.

Of course, I did not quit school several years later because I'd been stung by a teachers careless words, I quit because, among other things, I almost never experienced that feeling while I was there. I'm glad to say that to this day I still find my own brand of joy from reading, learning, and trying to work things out on my own. Remembering it now though, I wonder how many other students he may have inadvertently snuffed the desire to learn out of, and how many other similarly careless teachers are out there in classrooms today.

organ meat

2010-06-29T16:32:00.000-04:00

People have been doing some cool stuff with bioprinting tech for some time now. Veins and skin have already been produced in print-on-demand form. The exciting news of the day however is that apparently working lungs have been grown in a (I'm not making this up) bioreactor!

I caught the story on IO9 which refers to the artificial organs as "vat grown" and was immediately swept back into one of my favourite novels.

He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco façade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel.

Because he had a good agent, he had a good contract. Because he had a contract, he was in Singapore an hour after the explosion. Most of him, anyway. The Dutch surgeon liked to joke about that, how an unspecified percentage of Turner hadn't made it out of Palam International on that first flight and had to spend the night there in a shed, in a support vat.

It took the Dutchman and his team three months to put Turner together again. They cloned a square meter of skin for him, grew it on slabs of collagen and shark-cartilage polysaccharides. They bought eyes and genitals on the open market. The eyes were green.

William Gibson, "Count Zero"

chapters indigo site needs more win

2010-06-22T23:22:00.002-04:00

Update: 07/23/2010

I tweeted a link to this ranty post out to @chaptersindigo and got this back today from @indigo_renee

"@phro Tx for the suggestions. Some of your concerns are definitely on our development roadmap. Others, I'll look into. @chaptersindigo"

Thanks guys! I'm looking forward to checking out what you cook up.

Aside from creative curse words, liver damage, and extra pounds, the only other thing I've had a long term interest in collecting is books. Which is to say that besides being an avid reader I am also an avid book buyer. I think libraries have their place, for research, and for folks who are big readers for the sake of reading. But me, I love reading and I love books besides. I almost always read with a notepad and pen beside me, and I love taking a highlighter to my favourite passages. To me the book, like the computer, is a tool that can (and should!) be personalized for maximum throughput.

I say all that to say, I buy a lot of books. A regular payday treat for me is to stop by a bookstore on the way home. I re-buy books I already own so I can give away copies without depleting my stash. On my desktop computer at work, home, on my cell phone, and on my nightstand are lists labelled "things to read", and I'll probably buy them all.

When I started using Chapters/Indigo's site to order stuff they didn't stock in stores I also began using their wishlist feature as a way to consolidate all these disparate lists into one sane place; namely, where the books are. In so doing, by extension I started keeping a list of things that could be better on the Chapters/Indigo site, which for some reason they do not have a place for on their site so I'll put it here.

1. How about a suggestions page?

Why do I have to put this list on my blog? Chapters are you really so disinterested in how customers think you could improve?

Yes I see there is a "contact us" form, how very 90's, but it appears to be entirely customer service related. Something more obvious would be better. Don't make it difficult for people to try to help you. That should be a rule in business and life in general.

2. Disappearing features stink.

Some books cannot be added to the wishlist for no apparent reason at all. That book I linked is currently "Temporarily Unavailable to Order New". Does that mean I should just stop wishing? Say it ain't so!

The current availability of a product has absolutely no bearing on my desire to have that product at some point in the future. Plus there is quality customer data to be had there regarding demand, data that could be used to encourage publishers that a reprint is in order. All that valuable data is being silently ignored while simultaneously removing functionality for the user.

3. Do you know who I am?

This weekend my dad and I snooped around the Festival Hall Chapters on John street and we picked up a few titles, one of which was an item from my wishlist. I purchased that book with the same debit and irewards cards I use to buy books online, yet when I logged in to the site a couple days later I had to remove the title from my wishlist by hand.

All the necessary data to take care of this without my help is right there to be used. Even if the next time I sign in it just asks me "Hey, we noticed you bought this, should we take it off your wish list for you?", that's fine. Those precious seconds of user attention being wasted on something that ought to be automatic could be better used promoting products.

4. Do you know who that guy is?

When I search for the author of my currently-unavailable-yet-wished-for book I discover that David Dunning is a popular name among authors. No problem, I figure my guy isn't writing about managing a dental practice so I click on the David Dunning below and something bizarre happens, it just searches for the guys name again.

That link may as well be labelled "waste our bandwidth, waste your bandwidth, and waste some time", or more plainly "reload". Chapters, please talk to a DBA and see about getting a unique key on your authors database table so when clicked it does what a user would expect and limits search results to the David Dunning they're interested in.

5. Coffee?

While scouring the site looking for a suggestion page I discovered that I pass the Chapters/Indigo home offices on my way to and from work every day. If somebody over there reads this and would like to chat by all means get in touch.

You're buying :)

morning chuckle

2010-06-17T08:29:00.000-04:00

Saw this as I was gnoshing and ramping up my caffeine levels in front of the computron this morning and it put a smile on my face.

Points to @TorontoPolice for being hilarious. Bonus points for anyone with a plausible theory as to why the hell that question would matter to someone being pulled over.

why do i have to be mr. pink?

2010-06-15T16:59:00.000-04:00

I enjoyed this interesting video yesterday by Dan Pink and then today I was randomly linked to a recent Wired article which is basically a dialogue between him and Clay Shirky, creator of the brilliant Shirky principal among other things. When I trip across the same interesting person twice in as many days I usually take that as a sign that I should be paying attention. If you work for someone, or have someone who works for you, or both, then I think both this video and the article are worth a moment of your attention too.

Pink: " ... When Deci took people who enjoyed solving complicated puzzles for fun and began paying them if they did the puzzles, they no longer wanted to play with those puzzles during their free time. And the science is overwhelming that for creative, conceptual tasks, those if-then rewards rarely work and often do harm."

three interesting things for monday

2010-06-14T08:20:00.000-04:00

Here's a few interesting things to help you either distract yourself from your week or take it head on. Your call.

1. Instead of spending eternity in an urn or perhaps as an artificial diamond, how about as a piece of 3D printed art? Perhaps, a tableau of a couple birds and a toaster?
- gracias

2. I've yet to find any groundbreaking research at Zachary Burt's blog, but his well metered explanations and summaries of past and current psychology research have prompted me to put a few things on my reading list. His three part series beginning with "The Science of Compliance" gets the point across by citing a world renowned professor and a world renowned jackass. My kind of article.

3. By far the most interesting thing I discovered by reading Charlies post today about Afghanistan was this article by a man who grew up in Kabul "in the 50's and 60's". He describes the city he remembers and provides a series of photos of impressively bouffanted ladies and brylrceemed men working and studying in what looks like any western city of the era.

hallucinations, satellites, statistics, and google maps

2010-06-13T12:11:00.000-04:00

You really ought to go read this interesting conversation about something odd found on Google maps.

In the first ten comments or so you may be surprised to learn all sorts of things, such as: What are the odds are that this photo happens to be of an area right near where you grew up? Why does it look like it could be a Jefferson Airplane T-shirt? What satellites could have captured this image? And most importantly, what really happens when you go to ludicrous speed?

you have earned +1 cab company

2010-06-08T20:23:00.000-04:00

I had the opportunity to enjoy a warm sunny afternoon in the company of a large pile of groceries today while waiting just over twenty minutes for a cab. In that time I had a chance to wonder why a city like Toronto would want more than one cab company. Like most Canadian cities we have a regulated taxi rate. There is some debate about whether or not that is Good Thing (TM) but I'll let you make up your mind on that.

My thinking is, if the rate is the same across cab companies, who benefits from not centralizing dispatch across all companies?

A cabbie for Becks (for instance) could be just around the corner from someone who puts a call in to Royal Taxi. The Becks cabbie now waits and so does the caller, not knowing they could help each other out.

As far as my twenty minute musings can determine, the overall effect of a centralized dispatch point across all cab companies would be that cabbies spend less time and gas on their way to pick up fares who spend less time waiting. Because there are more cabs in the system, the probability of lower proximity between cabs and fares increases.

I figure there must be a slimy middleman somewhere in this scheme collecting profit from the current lack of optimization and I have a feeling that person can be found where taxi permits are issued, but I'm not certain.

Anyone have an idea here? Who benefits from the existing configuration? I'd like to work out who it is so I can point to them and say; "Look at this awful time-wasting, smog-loving profiteer who wants to make you wait in the ~~beautiful sunshine~~ erm, pouring rain so they can make a better percentage!"

if i jimmy a door with a credit card is that a digital lockpick?

2010-06-03T01:06:00.009-04:00

Yesterday afternoon the details dropped about a new Canadian copyright bill called C-32. (Human readable summary here). The loudest squaking you'll hear about this bill will no doubt be regarding the part that removes any rights you have to rip CD's or DVD's to your iPod or media center, or record TV on your DVR, or make personal backups of any media you've bought. Under C-32 these rights all become null and void if that media is protected by a digital lock.

Basically if you have to crack encryption to do what you want with what you've paid for doing so will mean breaking the law.

Which I think sucks, but I'm no law guru so I won't comment beyond that, there are plenty of other smart folks out there tackling the pros and cons. Go read up and decide for yourself if that's a good thing for Canadians.

My question is this: If you can't break a digital lock in order to do what you want with a product you have purchased, shouldn't manufacturers be required to clearly label these products as being "protected".

How am I to know what products I can legally use to my satisfaction if I don't find out that it's protected by a digital lock until I get home? At that point I'm double screwed because businesses have known for years that digital locks don't mean diddly squat and have acted accordingly.

If only there were some universally recognizable logo, like the Explicit Lyrics warning label. Wait a minute ... there IS a logo to warn about digital locks, and it's conveniently available in ready-to-be-printed-as-a-sticker format here! I predict I will be invited to leave many a Best Buy this year ...

EDIT: As it turns out, the xxAA have beaten me to this brilliant evil plan, those bastards! How can I twist my mustache while hatching plots now? Anyway the image they chose is slightly less wordy and looks like this. So keep your eye out for it and vote with your dollars!

kick(start) a diaspora when it's down?

2010-06-02T08:24:00.001-04:00

Like a lot of people, when I caught wind of the Diaspora project I decided to ante up and see what some hipster lookin' kids from NYU could do about taking the suck out of Facebook. I'd never used Kickstarter before, the platform they used to collect digital alms to fund their work so I bought a temporary Visa card and put ten bucks in their coffer looking forward to seeing how it all turned out. Then I got distracted and wandered off to spend the rest of my temporary Visa on stupid shirts and other internet foolishness.

Fast forward to today, the end of their fundraising period. Which apparently Kickstarter waits for before they actually try to charge your card, so of course now that my sweet geometry apparel is paid for and en route, my donation got declined. So now I'm the asshole who jerks the rug out from under these guys to the tune of TEN DOLLARS!

We're talking tens of dozens of cents here people.

Okay so it's not a big deal, but seriously I can't be the only one who had this happen. Maybe it never occurred to them that someone might not implicitly trust them from the get go? C'mon Kickstarter, get yer head in the game.