Liming's Micromusing

never before have I with so little to say said so much to so few

What horse's ass came up with this stupid standard?

This is being circulated in the standard community which often takes harsh criticism - such as "what horse's ass came up with this stupid standard?". Here is the answer.  

The "standard" distance between the rails (an arbitrary 143.51 cm) is due to the fact that they were built by the people who built the pre-railway tramways which were built by the people who used the same jigs and tools to build wagons of which the wheel spacing was determined by the width of the ancient wheel ruts in remote areas which was determined by the width of the Roman war chariots which were made just wide enough to fit two horse asses.  So literally, at least two horse asses came up with this standard.

Anyway, this reminds me the origin of some software engineering terms.. such as "scenarios" and "patterns"..  :-)

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Top secrets revealed

I attended an interesting academic talk on a piece of research called Pedigreed Attribute eLicitation Method (PALM) which was created by two architecture gurus... Over a drink, now I know the secret behind the true expended acronym PALM. If you know the authors, you probably could guess..I threatened to write a paper citing this paper but sneaking in the true expended meaning. Stay tuned. :-P

Btw, another secret revealed over the drink was about another architecture guru being in the trunk of three CIA agents... surreal but totally true story. :-)

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Books that defy rationality

Bad books are the ones you can choose not to read or throw away after a few pages.  Frustrating books are the ones that you are torn between throwing it away and keeping reading for the mixed bag of quality. 

Both of Dan Ariely's books on "irrationality" are such frustrating ones - books that contain interesting experiments and insights but mixed with gaping logic holes, false assumptions, and stretchy conclusions. 

The whole premise of the first book - Predictable Irrationality is to deliberately overlook some long-term and strategic, but still tangible and monetary factors (lumped together as irrational "emotions") in decision making. For example, seeking revenge may appear irrational if you only consider the effort involved and what you can get immediately. But if you consider the warning effect you exert on the offender, and more importantly, the people around you to prevent future victimisation, it might be very rational to seek revenge. By removing these types of factors in a decision, you can easily call any decision irrational - a bit of playing with words. No wonder he was even hackled during his TED talk - his talk was equally frustrating to listen to. 

So I predicted that his new book - "the Upside of Irrationality" is his shy way of admitting the problems by "calling" (another word game) those omitted factors the "upside of an irrational decision". (If you consider the whole spectrum of factors, those so called irrational decisions are very rational and reasonable). 


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Firing-friendly building facade

The facade of our NICTA building is obviously very amenable to a modern firing scene - employee walking out of a "menacing" building with a huge box... 
A crew is filming such a scene downstairs for a popular show (whose name I cannot reveal as I was told).  :-)

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(NICTA building)

Mark also wondered why people can always put their stuff into a single box when leaving. I personally need two trolleys to get my stuff out if that day comes.. ;-)

 

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(not the actual scene.. a reenactment from Lehman Brothers where the whole drama was distilled into employees walking out with boxes.)

Twenty Up

It was a scary experience to go to the concert of a singer you listened to twenty years ago... it reminds so much about yourself, your age cohorts and the music taste. Maybe not as bad as those concerts for empty-nesters. :-)  
(Don't ask me which one I went to.. :-P)

 

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(Btw, The Eagles is coming to Sydney.....)

I can finally ditch my iPod Touch

Found some time tonight to download my Audible.com library into the recently released Audible for Android app. Now the final piece of the puzzle is in place (Kindle for Android was the second last piece). I then switched my Sony bluetooth headphone from iPod to Android (which, unlike iPod Touch, has proper support for A2DP and can use the microphone). I am now finally satisfied with this all-in-one device. :-)

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