GeoGuessr

 My workmate Dave Macarthur introduced me to this quite addictive online geography game. I am generally not one for online games; but I am hooked on this and have spent 15 minutes every day now for 15 days running trying to guess the locations I am dropped in. 

You have three minutes to make a guess as to where you are (and there are 5 rounds). Some like this screenshot are very hard: you are haring down the road looking for a road sign or at least a scrap of writing. Is it a roman alphabet like ours or Cyrillic? Or Thai? If it's roman letters, are there any ø or ç or ü to give a hint? If you're really lucky you'll see a flag.

If you want to try this, here are my hints garnered from 2 weeks’ experience

• I have never yet been dropped in China, USA, Canada or France. 
• The creator is Swedish. Scandinavia and the Baltic states occur quite often; so it pays to bone up on the telltale look of those languages. They don't all have Ås.
• The graveyard for high scores is South America. If I wanted to turn Pro at this, the first thing I would do is dedicate some time to researching the telltale differences between say Uruguayan and Mexican countryside. A newbie like me see signs in Spanish, some rundown abobe buildings with rebar sticking out the top, jungly trees and ocean. You guess Tampico in Mexico but it's Maldonado in Uruguay. Sorry you are 7,700km out and you score 3 out of a possible 500 points.
• No-one says you can't Google things in another tab during your 3 minutes; BUT my personal rule is you go in with your pre-existing knowledge and do your best. I have been known to yell to others in the room “which island in Indonesia has all the volcanoes!?”

Yes that's right - that's a lion in a sidecar

I think The Selvedge Yard has claims to be the world's finest website. I will make the case.

1. It contains this photo of a wall-of-death stunt that has taken things up a notch, viz. there is a lion in the sidecar. A lion.

2. It contains another photo which I will not reproduce here, but which has the caption Tornado Smith posts a letter while riding penny farthing bicycle.

3.  It has the above photo above a heading JACK NICHOLSON | REBEL ROUSERS which I read very clearly as REBEL TROUSERS. My mistake - and yes that does dent my case slightly but pressing on to

4. Gobsmacking pic of Schwarzenegger, Hefner and basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain. Just hangin'. Hef has the all-denim suit. Wilt has the 18 inch thongs.

Alright, yes it is mostly motorbike-related and there is some cheesy 70s pinup stuff but - you know the lion is pretty awesome.

Net down

The internet has been down intermittently at work today and yesterday. At some stage this afternoon we started doing internet things in real life, for chuckles. I Liked some things. Dave Followed me and started Liking them too. Then I started Unliking them to spite him. Things looked like getting creepy when Nathan came in and I tried to Friend him.

I continue to take over the internet

My work colleague Ben went fishing up in the lakes last weekend. He says he caught a tench - I don't know how he identified it, but for the sake of the story let's say it really was a tench. Of course, he consulted the internet for good tench recipes, and this is what he found, high up in the Google search.1

1. Says he. I have just repeated his experiment and cannot see it anywhere but I am not letting that stand in the way of a blog post.

Are you concerned about Tin Whiskers?

The internet is really het up about it. Some things I Googled;

• Many companies are haunted with worry about tin whiskers.


• Tin whiskers arise from stresses in the plating.


• Tin whiskers don't have to be airborne to damage equipment.


• To address the threat of tin whiskers, a review of mitigation strategies is presented.


• Tin whiskers have been identified or are highly suspected in the costly failure in a number of electronic systems.


• CALCE Consortium has posted an alert, warning manufacturers of electronic hardware that tin whiskers represent a current failure risk, that must be addressed [TIN WHISKER ALERT, 2002]


• In high-voltage, high-current circuits, any shorts caused by tin whiskers are quickly burnt out.


• The phenomenon of tin whiskers is something you've likely heard discussed, maybe in scared whispered tones.


• One group of theorists has estimated that tin whiskers have caused losses of billions of dollars to date.


• This two day symposium will bring together international experts, in the field of tin whiskers.


• In a perverse kind of way, tin whiskers are good for the consumer market.

I think the first thing you should do when you get home is just do a quick room-to-room check for any of those tin whiskers. I'll do the same. Then I'll call you. OK?

Help block the Australian government's proposed mandatory internet filter

Hands off our Aussie anti-semitic ratbag!!!

I was quite shocked by a story in The Age this morning. A retired Australian teacher was arrested on a plane at Heathrow. His name is Gerald Frederick Toben, and he runs something called the Adelaide Institute - it sounds quite anodyne but is in fact a mouthpiece for his virulently anti-Semitic views. Toben spent seven months in jail in Germany in 1994 for inciting racism.

When arrested yesterday, he was in transit on his way from the United States to Dubai. He is now being held for extradition to Germany to face fresh charges. He has breached various Australian court orders to remove his website and cease his activities. From what I can tell he is a reprehensible person, and his website runs the gamut from ratbag to plain vile.

What made me sit up straight was the fact he was arrested in London, on a European warrant, to be tried in Germany for crimes committed in Australia. His website allows him to broadcast his extremist views into any country in the world (unless that country takes the China approach and filters the web on behalf of its citizens). Now it appears the breadth of his reach is being turned against him.

In his case I won't miss him if he spends 5 years in jail in Germany. But the principle is interesting. Presumably ignorance of the laws of other countries is no excuse. How about you and I? Are we sure we aren't breaking the libel, obscenity or privacy laws of Saudi Arabia, Iran or China on our websites?