Tall Ships Race

Today was the Tall Ships Race, one of the Privateers Weekend Events for Second Life's RFL charity drive. Here the winner receives her Trophy on Nepenthe Bridge in Winterfell, the map shows the course around our islands.

Science based websites

Contrary to what Google Search often indicates, there are plenty of good science based websites and blogs. They aren't however dedicated to making money by selling you snake oil and blue sky, so they don't try to get themselves onto that all important first page. Here's a few:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/

Blog for veggies

http://rawfoodsos.com/

Vaccines, fallacies etc

http://www.skepticalraptor.com/

Various nonsenses exposed

http://www.hoaxorfact.com/

Quackwatch

http://www.quackwatch.com/index.html

What's the harm in pseudoscience?

http://whatstheharm.net/

Alliance for Natural Health

http://www.anh-usa.org/

Mostly chemistry

http://blog.everydayscientist.com/

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/

Upbeat stories about how technology can save the planet

http://www.smartplanet.com/

Second tier nonsense

We all know about the quack and fraud industry and its use of the Internet. The front line offenders are regularly debunked and refuted, as Searching on 'mercola fraud' or 'natural news hoax' shows.
Nevertheless they thrive because many people believe anything they agree with.

Backing up the top rankers are a wide network of lesser 'information digest' websites. Below is a selection of them, collected mostly from Facebook friends who posted links to them. This is no reflection on those people, the articles they recommended were generally harmless.

I'm not directly linking to these sites so as not to add to their popularity. Copying, Pasting and looking at them will reveal from their menus that they cover similar ranges of subjects: activism, economy, health food, politics, poverty, rights, GMO, climate, fracking, fluoride, vaccines... you get the demographic. What you won't find is the underlying reality that the quacks hate: critical thinking, basic science, logic and reason.

Some of them appear to be auto-generated, picking up articles from elsewhere and linking to them with no original content. Others are 'citizens' websites, depending on material sent in by others with no editorial oversight. The rest are just unselective, if the content fits it will be printed no matter where it comes from; one of the easiest ways they can be spotted is that they regard the flagship woo sites as reliable sources.

http://www.trueactivist.com/

- Reprints from Natural News

http://www.zengardner.com

- Everything woo in one place

http://www.knowledgeoftoday.org/

- Mostly quantum woo, just reprints nothing original.

www.whydontyoutrythis.com

- Mostly OK but no fact checking, includes the GMO rats, super food cures for cancer and vaccine autism court stories

http://beforeitsnews.com

- Citizens Press website, unedited.

http://tv.greenmedinfo.com/

- Anti-vaxx, chem trails, fluoride mixed with random science that looks alternative

- General niceness and positivity with woo. Anti-vaxx etc

http://naturalsociety.com/

- Another clone. Anti-vaxx. Gullible, unselective.

http://www.collective-evolution.com/

- Anti-vaxx

http://www.wakingtimes.com/

- Health orientated, aggregating.

http://www.realfarmacy.com

- Chemtrails, diet cure for cancer, GMO rats again

http://tv.naturalsociety.com/

- References Natural News and Alex Jones, positive, run by gun nut.

http://naturalsociety.com/

- Generalist, quotes Natural News

http://www.undergroundhealth.com/

- Front for homeopathy store

Being careful with links

You come across a webpage with something useful you want to share so you Post, Tweet or Blog about it on your Social Media of choice. Everyone does this, it's what the Internet is all about.

Yes, but... There always seems to be a "but" doesn't there.

We all want lots of people to visit our webpages - to read good advice, buy our stuff, whatever. To do that they have to find them, and that means Search Engines.
One parameter that Search Engines go by is Links. If lots of people are linking that means they found what they wanted so most likely other people will find that link useful too. Of course they might be saying "I just found this horrible webpage" but let's ignore that one.

So let's suppose you are a conartist, a quack, a fraud, whatever - you are offering something that isn't legit. Your website looks good, you put in all the right phrases like "morphic resonance", "quantum orbs" and "100% natural organic", now you want more traffic. Here's one way - add some pages that aren't nonsense, just general good advice like "eat more vegetables". You don't have to research this stuff yourself you just use someone else's work, with pictures and a video if possible, and maybe put "Source" at the bottom. Like this:
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/
I'm using MSN as a template example. Look carefully and you'll see that the articles come from news agencies or are writeups of information from elsewhere. MSN staff are reporters not scientists, which is fine and good because that's their job. Nevertheless it's always sensible to check the Source out as reporters can slant stories, oversimplify them or simply make errors.

So, I want to find news about Vegetables, I do my Google Search, find what looks to be (and actually is) a rational article and post a link to it. What's the harm in that?

The article was on the quacks-r-us.org website. By linking to it I just helped Dr Evil PhD(Arkham) with his evil plan to stop people vaccinating their kids and buy his homeopathic bottles of magic water instead. OMG. I just killed someone's child!
Now I'm not going to be fooled by Dr Evil and nor (I hope) are you, but those links help more gullible people than us find him. Please don't do it - use reputable Sources for your good advice.

Where's my Start button gone?

So I power on (me cup of coffee, computer big button) and log in and up comes the background pic but nothing else. Uh, oh... CTRL-ALT-DELETE, black screen. Eek. Manually switch off, reboot, everything's fine.
It turned out to be a video card two screen problem, it looks like the latest update of Catalyst, the AMD control program, has deviously changed something that isn't happy with my switching off with two screens and restarting with just one.

Need

Here's a simpler word that has also aquired a new meaning that isn't in dictionaries.
We all know what 'need' means, it expresses a requirement for something. Thus "I need a drink" indicates that the speaker is thirsty.

However consider these:

"You need to read this book"
"What you need to understand is that ..."
"You need to be quiet folks"
- which is a less aggressive alternative for the command "Be Quiet!"

The emphasis here has shifted to the speaker telling others what the speaker thinks they need. The shift in meaning has in some cases reached the point where in context the other person plainly doesn't want to comply:
"You need to give me all your money right now!"

Smirking

Chatting on the Internet gets one close and personal with language as she is spontaneously typed, including an often ignored factor - the differences between dictionaries and how we actually use words. Here's an example I finally got puzzled enough to look up just now, "smirk".
Online dictionaries agree about this word:
Verb: Smile in an irritatingly smug, conceited, or silly way.
Noun: A smug, conceited, or silly smile: "a self-satisfied smirk".

However when 'real people' are asked to define it the negative content mostly isn't there:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090413212934AAMHIBK
"Smiling very slightly, like you are trying not to. Usually one side of your mouth is smiling more. And it usually means that that person is up to something"

Americans use this word regularly, Brits do not, and dictionaries have yet to notice that its meaning has changed.

40Mbps!

The BT Engineer arrived to connect me up to Fiber Optics. It was quick and painless, and my black EE router now has a white BT modem next to it feeding it stuff. I went for a 40Mbps connection (could get more) and that's what testing says I'm getting.

Of course what I get back is unlikely to be that good!

Trikassi in winter

Chateau Trikassi, winter 2012, photo by Wildstar Beaumont. Serra Anansi, Seneshelf of Winterfell, brings snow overnight to her land of dreams.

Do not Press this Button

It was the 'Sleep' button on my keyboard, and it was accidental honest... anyway the system glitched and refused to wake up so I had to reboot. The BIOS decided it was Level 1 Diagnostic time and reset to its defaults.
Fine, except - noisy fans! I had to venture into the BIOS to switch variable speed back on. I hate doing this, even though BIOSes have help screens these days they are in, well this being ASUS it's Chinese English.
So far so good, I tweaked the chassis fan speed down one step from 'whine' to 'hum'. ASUS have a free program called PC Probe that displays this kind of stuff and can set off alarms if things go wrong. Next I'll try going down to Super Quiet Mode!

Is this Fibre at last?

Orange (or EE as they now are) ninja updated my router software with - goodness - a switch to fibre button. Could this be... I looked on the website. Yes, there were the pricing options, a speed estimate (72Mbps) and a number to phone.
And they hadn't told me. Nor have BT, though I'm on their register list to be informed. Grr.
I signed up anyway, and now await a BT engineer to update my connection. In three weeks? Sigh...

BT fail. Again.

Yes, it was time last week for BT to contact me and say superfast fiber optics were ready as they had promised three months ago. And yes, the promised date has been advanced another three months.

Fun with Hi-fi

After twenty years, it was time to update my hifi system. It was sitting on one side of the living room unused with the PC and TV on the other.
I settled on a Sony STR-DH820 A/V as the hub, which though defined as 'entry level' sounds fine to me. It has more sockets in the back than Neo and is awesomely black.

Glitch #1 I managed to press the wrong buttons and disabled the remote control. A Google forum search found the remedy - press a previously untouched button unintuitively labelled 'AMP'. Yes it was in the manual but in the wrong place.

The PC, TV and satellite box connect to the A/V via HDMI cables, and the A/V turned out to have better video output: Channel 4 HD had been choppy but is fine now.

Glitch #2 was (ha!) Windows. Switching from the PC speakers to HDMI output, the only option was Stereo. Where's my surround sound? Back to Google, which suggested some complicated and suspiciously old remedies. So... update driver? Yes, there was a recent update but that made no apparent difference.
Eventually the solution hit me last night: Windows was being clever and looking to see where the sound was going. To a TV with just two speakers? OK, just stereo then. In the A/V settings I needed to disable 'Pass Through'. Now Windows could only see the A/V and up came the speaker options I wanted.

Fiber optics - BT fail

British Telecom installed fiber optics at my local exchange 18 months ago. Since then, every three months they have been promising to actually extend it to my road. A couple of days before the deadline, they push the date forward another three months.

So I've given up and signed a new internet/phone/mobile deal with Orange. 3Mb speed is fine for me, I can wait for long downloads.

Router change

My Orange Livebox has been suspect for a while, losing connection every couple of hours, so I replaced it with their new dedicated router, Bright Box.
Bright it is not - it's black! Also smaller, paperback sized. It connected up automatically once given my password and hasn't had a dropout yet.

Second Life Mesh Support

A Brief Look at Second Life Mesh Support is a short explanation of why Second Lifers are so excited about Mesh.

Up to now we've had Prims, polyhedrons which can be manipulated using an inworld editor, and 'sculpts', weird single prim objects that are created offworld. Now, finally, we can import 'mesh' objects of the kind used by other computer generated worlds. There are plenty of free editors out there and a common file format, now they have been thrown into the SL sandbox. This is going to be fun.

There is a new Mesh section in the SL Destination Guide that will no doubt be filling up fast.

Virtual reality scripting

Second Life has its own scripting language, without which nothing could move. Since SL is user created, anyone can write their own scripts using the built in editor and see them go wrong! Here is a library with some free samples.
Below is one what I wrote myself, the controller for a magic bridge. Say the password and the bridge appears!

// say password to activate prims in object
// this script must be in root prim
// activated scripts can be in any prim
// Oriella Charik 2010

// Bridge melts after (freezetime) seconds
float freezetime = 30;

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llSetText("Bridge Power", <1.0, 1.0, 1.0>, 1.0);
        // set channel to listen on
        llListen(0, "","","");
    }

    listen(integer channel, string name, key id, string word)
    {  
       if(word=="freeze")
       {
        llMessageLinked(LINK_ALL_CHILDREN, 0, "start", NULL_KEY);
        llSetTimerEvent(freezetime);
        }
       if (word=="melt")
      {
      llMessageLinked(LINK_ALL_CHILDREN, 0, "stop", NULL_KEY); 
      }
    }
  
    timer ()
    {
    llMessageLinked(LINK_ALL_CHILDREN, 0, "stop", NULL_KEY);
    }
}

For learning inworld I reccomend the College of Scripting.

Crowd numbers

I just spent a happy half hour googling around on the subject of crowd numbers (yes, the recent rallies in Washington DC sparked this off).

CBS News was slated by supporters of Glenn Beck for its estimate of his rally attendance (87,000), so they published the methodology and here's their estimate for the Rally for Sanity (215,000). Both have a 10% margin of error. Their estimate for the Obama inauguration was 800,000 by the way, lower than others.

• Blog by the expert partnering the survey company. It has plenty of links and information about the subject.
• Plenty of first hand accounts of the latter rally.
• Overhead view of the main crowd areas - in both cases more people were further away:

When I looked up rational estimates by supporters, one reason for disparity was obvious - crowd density. In camera shots taken from the ground (or even the top of monuments) density isn't clear, but the company CBS hired used a robot balloon camera that could do both overhead shots and oblique ones to see beneath trees. It was on the spot and could tour the whole crowd, later estimators were not.

The conclusion is much as usual. How was the data obtained? What is the margin of error? Why do you suppose you can understand any of this without having done Statistics 101 or switched your brain on before reading?

Also, take a look at who is giving you different data with no sources and no proof. If they claim that a source is wrong because they don't like what it says and then next week that the same source is totally accurate, alarm bells should be ringing in your head.

Saint Hill picket report 15th October 2010

Mostly the UK OG tag on to Anonymous protests these days, but this one we set up ourselves being on a Friday:

Three Old Guard and three Anonymous went to rain on Davey's big speech day at the IAS weekend.

After a short stint in East Grinstead High Street we arrived outside Saint Hill about 14:30. Traffic into the grounds was better organised this year with no jams, otherwise things inside seemed much the same as previous years.

Photos

The 'shatter the SPs' plan this year was two big speakers balanced on the perimeter wall connected to bagpipe music. Well, first they had to connect them which took a while but when it got going it was a WIN. Like loud, really loud, right next to Mr Mid Sussex Policeman's car. I don't think he was amused. This was death metal concert head bangingly loud.

And then... a chap from Health and Safety Environmental Protection arrived. With a meter. We didn't call him, and I don't think our glum friends across the road did either. How odd. Perhaps he heard the bagpipes from his office in town. Anyway, he wanted the speakers off, and Tony on the megaphone to turn his volume down from 11. We complied - no one messes with the man from H&S.

After a much quieter second half, we departed around 17:30.

Farmville is eating the Internet

The xkcd webcomic has a new edition out of its Map of Online Communities. Go take a look (the map enlarges if you click on it).

What the map does well is to place otherwise unconnected Internet communities into perspective. For example, political bloggers who suppose the wired world reads their every flame may be chastened to find the map needs an enlarged inset to show them. In some regions one group dominates - Warcraft on MMO island, Skype in messaging, and Facebook as the biggest nation.