Author Archives: alistair

An interesting idea on how to read text faster – LiveInk

A group
of scientists
in the US
reckon
that they
have a better
way of reading
text online.

They break
the text into
short phrases
like this.

The whole idea behind it is that the human eye didn’t evolve to read blocks of text, so it isn’t necessarily very good at it. Their research findings show that when reading a block of text our area of focus is pretty much circular (see image).

Area of focus when reading

So our brain is getting hit with characters from the lines above and below what we are reading. They reckon this is tiring to the brain and reduces speed and comprehension. Their software analyzes the structure of the sentences and breaks them up into short phrases.

Check out this example on their site.

Now that I think about it, I frequently use bullets and shorter sentences because they are easier to read and understand. I should sue these guys!

Why the whole world doesn’t read this blog – the elaboration likelihood model

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I am often frustrated when clear, logical ideas with plenty of evidence are rejected out-of-hand. Why do people fail to properly understand and process so much of the information available to them?

I recently read a brief description of a model (called the elaboration likelihood model) explaining how people process and evaluate new information. Basically the model says that people use a combination of two basic routes to understanding and evaluating an argument:

The central route – the thinking route. When processing information centrally people think carefully about the message and evaluate the arguments and implications. This is the way I wish everyone would process my ideas.
The peripheral route – using heuristics. Rather than carefully assessing all the information, people will often use simple cues and rules-of-thumb (heuristics) to evaluate arguments. Things like the communicator’s physical appeal and charm become important. Does the information look professional or do we regard the communicator as an expert?

Central Route	Peripheral Route
Does the argument make logical sense? Is there evidence supporting the argument? Does this information fit in with previous knowledge? What is the impact of this information?	Is the medium (speaker or document) attractive? Does the message feel right / good? Is the source regarded as an expert? Does the information look professional? Is the communicator charming or charismatic?

In most cases we would use a combination of the two approaches to evaluate new information. I got to wondering why people so often lean heavily to the peripheral route. I reckon the reason is that the central route is ‘expensive’ in it’s requirements:

Time – Is there enough time to properly evaluate the information.
Information – Is there enough information available.
Ability – Does the recipient have the ability and knowledge to evaluate the message. Background knowledge might be missing.
Motivation – This is a biggy. Does the recipient want to invest the time and effort needed to process and evaluate the message centrally?

Because of these requirements/costs people seldom use the central route properly. It would be completely impossible to fully process all of the information that we get bombarded with on a daily basis, so we ‘cheat’ and use the peripheral route.

That makes sense and it’s something that I need to take into account when trying to get ideas across. I need to remember that:

People are definitely going to, at least partially, judge my ideas on their presentation. Presentation is rightfully very important – I need to stop resenting that fact.
I also need to tailor my communications according to the 4 factors in order to make the central route more likely. Keep things short, easy to understand, and interesting. Motivation is what I find the toughest – almost nobody cares (or wants to know) what Alistair Pott thinks!

I suppose if you read this far I must have gotten things right. Although, I’d bet that the motivation was handled by the fact that you know me!

The movie trailer guy – Don LaFontaine

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You know The Voice from just about every movie trailer you see? Well there really is just one guy doing them – his name is Don LaFontaine and he has been the voice for more than 5000 movie trailers! He is incredibly sought after and does about 60 promotions a week – up to 35 in a single day.

You all know what he sounds like – now you know

Digg forced to surrender by a user revolt

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T-Shirt with the now famous HD-DVD code

There is a well known and pretty cool site called Digg. This is how it works:

People submit links to articles or sites that they think are cool.
Then other Digg users either vote for the link (they Digg it) or against the link.
Those links with more votes rise to the top of the list and are viewed by more and more people.

Digg can generate enormous traffic and when smaller sites get ‘Dugg’ their servers often go down due to all the traffic.

Recently someone posted a link to a code which could be used to unlock new HD-DVD encryption schemes. The HD-DVD companies were rather chipped off about it and threatened Digg with legal action if the link was not removed. So the Digg management team got worried and started removing all links to the unlock code.

What happened then was cool, scary and a significant first: people noticed their Digg entries being deleted and fought back! Soon Digg users were going NUTS and posting hundreds and hundreds of links to the unlock code. Thousands of people became involved and links were posted faster than they could be removed. Eventually Digg realised that their site had been taken over by the user community – they had a choice:

Basically shut Digg down and really anger the users
Change their mind and allow the links

So they surrendered. The co-founder posted the code himself and said:

“After seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

They made a brave and perhaps foolish choice. It’s a win in the war building up against censorship – and a significant point in the history of the web. The code is probably going to become an icon of the anti-censorship movement (see the T-Shirt above).

Also see a BBC news story about the whole thing.

UPDATE:
There are now more than 1.2million sites referencing the code! You can check the current Google count by going to this link. The AACS reckons they are going to sue each of those sites! Idiots…

My reactions to Cricket World Cup tragedies over the years

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Last night South Africa crashed out of yet another Cricket World Cup. In the past I devastated by these world cup exits, but I wasn’t nearly as upset as usual this time around. I think that this was partially due to the fact that it wasn’t a close match, and that we had played badly throughout.

However, I also like to think that my reactions to these tragedies show that I have been maturing.

Devastation after South Africa were bumbed out in 1999 When I was 16 in 1999 when we got bumped out of the competition by an ascendant Australia in that match. I still hurt thinking about what could have been if we had won that match.
Reaction – I collapsed onto my couch and cried – and I was upset for months (if not years)

Rain and stupidity ruined us in 2003 Then in 2003 we screwed up the rain charts and crashed out in needless fashion – another close one and this time at home. This time I was 20, at university and living in digs.
Reaction – I went out and drowned out my sorrows in a big way.

Compleletly whipped in 2007 Now in 2007 we were hammered by a truly awesome Australian outfit. Out team had played badly all tournament and we were well and truly pummelled.
Reaction – I said “Oh, well” carried on with my work, went for a run and then had a lovely dinner with Julie.

The maturing Alistair illustrated through the metranomic tragedies of South Africa at the Cricket World Cup.

Awesome photo of a praying mantis

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This is a the greatest ever photo of a praying mantis (from Flickr). They really can be aggressive little buggers.

In fact, check out this photo and story about a mantis which captured and ate a hummingbird! He impaled the hummingbird with one spiny appendage and ate his fill with the other, before dropping the dead bird and moving on. Incredible.

Both links via Boing Boing

Some entertaining reading on Mugabeland

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The nutty dictator One of the Economist journalists is keeping a journal after sneaking back into Zim to check things out. He had previously been thrown out for being “a spy masquerading as a tourist” and was pretty frightened on his way in, especially after learning that “the man from Time spent an uncomfortable five days in the jug, without food”.

His first entry is about trying to sneak in without being noticed. He talks about having used “tennis rackets, bird-watching guides and enormous paintings” in the past to get in as a tourist. He was mightily relieved to find that although the government had boasted of a computerised list of banned journalists, they didn’t have any computers at the airport!

Hi second entry talks about how both Mugabe and the country he rules are strange combinations of wonderful and terrible. He describes how Mugabe is such a strange character:

“There’s something about the president, those Elton John glasses, the camp flicking of his wrists, the moustache that recalls both Chaplin and Hitler, that makes him as much a caricature as a real man”
“He is smart, agile, hard-working, yoga-exercising, frugal and he cracks a crude joke or two (Australians are “genetically modified criminals”; Tony Blair is a “boy in shorts” who leads a “government of gay gangsters”)”
“But he is a charmer with fingers dipped in blood.” Lately he has brutalised opposition supporters and “worst of all, in the early 1980s as he established his control, Mr Mugabe directed the murder of many thousand opponents in the country’s south.”

Camping weekend away at Tweede Tol

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This weekend Jules and I went camping at a place called Tweede Tol in the Bainskloof pass. It’s about 1.5 hours drive out of Cape Town and a great little place for a quick weekend away.

We only managed to leave Cape Town at about 4PM on Saturday so it was always going to be a little tight making it by 6PM when the camp site closes. Then we got a little lost on the way there (roads weren’t named what the map said they would be) so it was getting a little tense. The day was saved when we got directions from a massive Afrikaans guy with a curly mullet and a red city golf full of family. He gave us great directions and actually drove with us most of the way. He also pointed out the many speed traps along the way which was a great help.

So we got there just in time, and to my surprise the guy at the gate was quite happy with the printed confirmation I got after paying online. We were extremely lucky to get an awesome camp site near the end of the park and next to a river. We rushed to get the tent up before it got dark. Luckily, ours is an extremely simple tent and we were able to get it up in about 15 minutes – not bad for the first time.

We made a fire and then had lots of fun chatting, laughing, drinking wine, looking at the amazing stars, and playing with the camera. We got some pretty eerie pictures using the torch and putting the camera onto night mode. Check these out.

We had quite a comfortable night thanks to some great sleeping bags from my dad. They have built in inflatable mattresses which worked out great. A relatively comfortable sleep, and it was great being away from the city sounds. Jules got a little cold, I was a little warm – nothing unusual there.

In the morning I got the fire going again and then it was time for tea, breakfast snacks and packing up.

I bought a map of the hiking trails for R1 and we chose the longest route available to day hikers. A 9km hike from the camp site, up around a small mountain, and then back down to camp past a waterfall. I must say that I have never hiked along such rocky and uneven terrain. It was nothing like the Drakensberg hiking of my youth. In fact it was so rugged that we often had real problems figuring out where the path was and landed up walking quite a bit more than the 9km on the map.

Highlights of the hike itself were:

A delicious lunch of left-overs from the braai.
Awesome views.
This shy little snake (which I almost stepped on!)
Wading around in the river. It was too cold to actually swim in.

After the hike we enjoyed the beautiful drive back to Cape Town. A great weekend out of the city.

I’ll upload more photo’s to a Google album later and post the link here.

Debt nails the world’s oldest company after 1428 years of operation

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First temple built by Kongo Gumi The world’s oldest continuously operating business recently ended its impressive run of 1,428 years. Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi, in operation under the founders’ descendants since 578, succumbed to excess debt and an unfavorable business climate in 2006.

After such a long and successful history, what went wrong? Easy, they borrowed too much during the 1980’s when things were great in the Japanese economy. Then around ’92 and ’93 the Japanese economy shrank along with the value of their assets. They couldn’t keep up with debt and went under last year. What a pity.

Image above is the first temple they ever built (completed in 593). Below is a snap of some workers in the early 1900’s.

Kongo Gumi workers in the early 1900’s

(via Boing Boing)

Can you say “wrongful imprisonment”

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Prison fence Cody Webb, a kid in the states was recently jailed for 12 days because of a bomb threat called in to his school. They nailed him because they had caller ID on the number he called – so they knew that he had called around the time of the threat. So the principal called the guy into the office and asked him his number. When he replied ‘she started waving her hands in the air and saying “we got him, we got him.”’

‘They just started flipping out, saying I made a bomb threat to the school.’ After he protested his innocence, Webb says that the principal said: ‘Well, why should we believe you? You’re a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.’

So, despite the fact that the voice recorded sounded nothing like him, Webb was imprisoned in a juvenile detention facility. 12 days later someone realised that daylight saving had kicked in on the night of the incident and their timing was out by an hour. Webb had called the number a hour before the incident and was actually innocent!

What a hopeless feeling for him. Nobody believed him – not even his own parents. That sucks…