I just received notice that the summary report for the Ngauranga to Airport Transportation Study has been released. I’ve had a quick read through it already and I’m pleased with the reporting style. It strikes me as quite transparent, seeming to report rather than filter. It’ll be interesting to see what the media and the blogs have to say about it tomorrow.

In changing to a new gym, I had a regular fitness assessment. Ouch. I’ve got tons of room for improvement. You’d never guess that I’m coming from one gym and not just off of the street with a New Year’s resolution.

The news:

• I’m lighter than I thought, but I think this is loss of muscle mass.
• I’m taller than I thought – by 1cm.
• BMI is still a flawed system for body measurement. I’m not in my best shape, but I’m certainly not overweight.
• My body-fat measurement is up.

The plan:

• I need to get back into running shape. That’ll cut off the extra fat.
• I still have shoulder rehab work to do, but it shouldn’t stop me from much weight training activity.
• There are yoga and pilates classes that fit my life, which should help with my core stability and flexibility problems.
• I should probably get better with my food choices again. More cooking, less throwing things together.
• Everything really hinges on a regular schedule. 5 days/week is good. No cheating.

The goal:

• Over 6 months, my body-fat reading should drop by at least 2%. It’s not unreasonable.
• There’s still that half-marathon in August.

There have been two things to come up recently to give me reason to question ownership of stuff. Firstly, I’ve been musing for ages about selling my car. I have yet to go through with it, but it’s still in the plan. Secondly, I still don’t have a fixed phone at my new house.

The car

When I first moved to Christchurch in 2002, I spent about 3 weeks without a car. It didn’t last long. Before the end of the month, I owned a 1996 5th Generation Honda Prelude. I enjoyed driving it, but I hated the amount of time and energy put into tracking down the source of the 4-wheel-steering problem, which persisted into my life in Auckland.

Attempting to live in Auckland without a car is akin to a death sentence. I certainly hope it has improved in the last 2 years, but it was a nightmare when I lived there. The car was a curse and a blessing; the latter being due to the bus system being an actual death sentence. The city is a victim of sprawl and bad design. I don’t think I’d even contemplated the possibility of existing there without a car over my 18 month stay.

Moving to Wellington changed everything – the city is compact, well serviced by transit¹ and has a decent amount of foot traffic. It was a trigger that caused me to think of life sans-auto. This is where the real question starts – should I sell it?

Owning the car, but not driving, has costs. Licensing is just shy of $100 for 6 months. It’s a bit cheaper to pay a full year, but no thanks. A “warrant of fitness” is carried out every 6 months, costing around $50 plus any repair work needed to pass everything. Finally, there’s insurance. Mine isn’t stupidly expensive, but it’s on the order of $500/year. That’s about $800 to own the car. Petrol and maintenance is on top of that. There are two reasons why I like to have the car handy: road trips and for when I’m late. As it turns out, there are solutions to each problem: car rental agencies and planning ahead. Sure, it’s not quite that simple, but practice makes it easier.

Several problems are avoided by getting rid of the car, too:

• I live close to Massey University, which means that my street is all restricted parking.
• Petrol prices are always increasing. The lack of stress is underrated.
• People keep nudging my bumpers when they’re parking.
• I’m forced to think about where I need to be, and plan better for it.

This one really is a no-brainer. I don’t need a car. It’s a drain on me. Time for it to go. And that’s without getting into the politics.

The phone

I have an ADSL connection at home. This connects through the copper phone lines, but technically does not require phone service to be active. However, there isn’t a provider in Wellington that allows for abandoning the fixed phone line entirely. With my mobile phone, I already have coverage, so why do I need two? Well, there is a reason. According to Vodafone’s international calling rates for mobiles, calling Canada is a rip-off compared to their fixed-line rates. The question really comes down to whether paying $41/month + $5/call capped is any cheaper than $0.49/min. If all my calls home are long, sure. I’ve abused this in the past and would happily do it again.

As it is, I don’t really have an option. My house isn’t able to carry Telstra Clear’s cable service, because it’s in an apartment block². I’m already paying for the fixed line, so I might as well use it for my calls home, too.

¹ Well serviced is loosely true. It could be much, much better, and will need to improve several times over before a popular mode shift can occur.

² Given that the building I live in is less than 5 years old, this is a critical failure in design. Why developers are allowed to cut out anything useful in the name of lowering costs is beyond me. Damn them all to heck!

I’m not one to be superstitious, but I couldn’t help taking a picture of this one. Love is in the air, apparently. Or, at least, love is in the grape.

From time to time, I get a warning popping up on my Last.fm profile page:

Some tracks you submitted have not been added to your profile for the following reason: The track you submitted appears to be badly tagged – please check the file’s tags.

That very same message appeared again this morning. The funny part is that I spent all of yesterday listing to Last.fm radio stations¹. If anything was mis-tagged, it was their own fault, or the fault of their player software. Aside from that, I’d made a request in their forum ages ago asking to have the notification box include some information about which track was badly tagged. They had replied that it was in the pipeline. About a year later, no such luck. C’mon guys – get it together.

¹ Radio stations from yesterday: Tagged downtempo, Tagged idm, Tagged mellow, Similar Artist: Mogwai, Similar Artist: Tokyo Police Club

I was kindly informed by my flatmate that Wellington Hatters Ltd is soon to be closing down and is currently offering the remaining hats at 50%. As part of the shopping trip for our flatwarming party, we’d stopped off to see if I could get sorted out. I’m pretty happy with the result.

I’d been hesitant about hats for a long time, but it’s important to find something that suits me. The fedora is a bit too wide-brimmed for my liking and the bowler I tried sat up too high. I think it’s just a matter of trying a few out and seeing what I can find. We’re considering hosting a hat-themed party next month. That leaves about 3 weeks to see if I can find something better than my new trilby.

The Dominion Post flashed a dire warning of increased road costs based on the Greater Wellington Regional Council asking the government for a law change allowing for congestion charges to be made legal.

This stems comes from a report from 2007 indicating that transportation through the region would likely benefit from congestion pricing. Ideally, it’s a push to get people from cars onto buses and trains. At the same time, funds raised through the scheme are intended to feed into public transportation modes, much like the petrol tax proposed in Auckland.

I expect that the public response will be shockingly negative and it looks like Mayor Kerry is covering herself early:

It’s illegal now and I don’t think there’s been enough work done. We must do everything we can to protect Wellington cbd.

I can’t tell you what she’s protecting the CBD from, but I’m with the regional council – I think that putting a price on traffic is a good way to protect the CBD from itself.

There needs to be a lot of discussion on this topic, and not just the knee-jerk responses that are sure to get fired out. This sort of pricing will likely hit low-income households, especially at the start, but their problems will only get worse as petrol costs saunter on past the $2/L mark. Discussion needs to be real and honest, starting now. Unfortunately, the backpedalling on any useful discussion has already begun.

¹ The government has a running comparison of domestic and international fuel prices available.

Thou shalt never pass off undercooked rice to an Indian girl.

Overclocking DSPs can yield undefined results.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been testing out new contact lenses. The optometrist wasn’t happy with the lack of oxygen getting through to my eye – and if she’s not happy, I’m not happy.

When I first started wearing contacts, there was only one brand available in a toric lens which would cover my astigmatism. Since then, two other brands have appeared on the market. After careful consideration, I think they’re getting worse. My original lenses seemed fine to me, but did tend to dry out after a long day. The second pair felt weird – I’d notice them tickling my eyelids from time to time, just enough to be annoying. The pair I’m about to rip out is, by far, the worst. They don’t pop onto my eye as easily as the others and they tend to fold in half and pop out within the first few blinks. Even after a few hours, they don’t feel settled.

Luckily, I don’t wear contacts regularly. It’s primarily for volleyball games and sometimes to give my face a rest from wearing glasses. For that reason, I’ll probably end up sticking with my original pair¹, if I’m allowed to. Of course, after the last trials, the second pair will probably feel like heaven. Maybe that was the point…

¹ Which would let me keep my order running at Lenses Online.

The current issue of The Institute features; a collaborative project between the IEEE Signal Processing Society and Connexions to deliver free, up-to-date and reviewed technical information.

I’ve looked briefly at Connexions before, bookmarked it and mostly forgot about it. Having a quick look again yesterday turned up a huge amount of information, some of it directly related to my current project at work. However, there may be too much information. With so many sources, it is hard to filter through to a single document to select. The benefit of this project may not be new information, but rather pre-filtered information.

A lot of the research work that I do involves tracing through citations of papers I have for papers I need. Google Scholar is an important tool for me, but I find that most of what I’m looking for goes back to IEEE Xplore. Most older papers fall outside my subscription set¹, which leaves me abusing our corporate subscription. Ideally, many of these fundamental papers will be translated into summary papers, allowing free access and quick study before returning to the research paper at hand.

I’ll need to spend more time looking through what’s available before coming to any proper conclusion. The submission and review process was set to start at the beginning of 2008. A current search for IEEE on Connexions gives 86 results, very few of which appear to be the result of this project, but that number should start growing shortly. For the moment, I have another source to search through before I push our Xplore corporate account closer to the annual quota.

¹ This is because digital access to publications are by journal name, but many journals have changed name or have since become more specific in scope.

It’s one of the oldest web-comics that I still read. Sinfest had held my imagination and my sense of spirituality hostage for years and has recently come back to retake me. I’m not complaining. However, flipping through the archives is tedious, and given the volume of material, finding anything specifically is a small nightmare. This leaves one option: someone needs to buy me the books. First, second or third – I’ll happily take all three, but it’s okay to start with just one. And if someone is feeling a little overboard, I’d also be willing to put a poster up in my office.

Edit 2008/05/02: Fixed order of links to books…

There was a crispness hanging in the air by morning. It had texture and taste; it gave the world a lens of clarity. Like the couple who leaves the party unannounced, summer had given way without a word of warning. There was hope that the rainy weekend would clear into warmth, laughter over ice cream. Instead, the shift of the wind brought long sleeves and scarves. Autumn had slipped over the hills, offering one last chance to reflect before winter would push all thoughts of the beach into the part of the brain that remembers and forgets.

They were strangers. They have always been strangers. No real history except for the occasional conversation at the cafe where she once worked. He’d never offered his name and she hadn’t asked. Theirs was a very simple relationship: anonymous and friendly. So why did he jump when he saw her on the bus? She sat, busily minding her phone. He didn’t stare. Months had gone by without a thought, but sitting this close, time held still. The bus slowed and she shifted to stand, her eyes bumping into his in the crowd. Their brief conversation was friendly and anonymous. She was gone and they were still strangers.

It seems as if the Greater Wellington Regional Council is sponsoring a brief survey on transporting bikes on trains. It’s only open for comment until April 10th, so get in there quickly if it applies to you.

While you’re there, it’s worth having a look at GWRC‘s regional travel plans programme. It seems as if there’s even support from the regional council to develop workplace travel plans, which is where I see the greatest benefit. If car-pooling is your thing and there’s nothing available within your company, have a look at carshare.co.nz. Ideally, we can put an end to the dominance of Single-Headed Cars, whether it’s adding a person or subtracting a car.

On Friday, we had Paul Callaghan give a lecture at work about developing New Zealand’s economy so as to not be entirely reliant on commodities. This is perfectly suited our company, given that our raison d’être is to develop technology that can be transferred to Kiwi companies.

For over a century, the New Zealand economy has been based largely on agricultural exports. Unfortunately, returns on those exports have been dropping, and ramping up production is dangerously unsustainable. This translates to diminishing wealth per person, compared to the OECD average, and is becoming a cause for concern. Comparisons were drawn against Australia and lots of graphs were displayed, indicating government investment patterns in science and research. The short summary is that we spend a lot of money on biotechnology and not nearly enough money anywhere else. The former is supported by the recent science funding package that was announced. The latter was supported by statistics. The danger is that our portfolio is hugely unbalanced.

I would be slightly more critical of the presentation of the statistics if the message were phrased differently. Callaghan’s approach to address the imbalance is based on an increase in overall funding to the science sector, rather than displacing existing funding. If the message were different, I would take a closer look at the breakdown of the funding per field. The sector-resolution was low and the audience was never told exactly what was lumped into biotechnology.

Of course, asking for extra funding is hard. Where does the money come from? It’s an election year; promises are of tax cuts in order to buy votes. Bringing research funding up to a new level would mean that some other part of the government’s budget would have to suffer, unless the money were to come from investment firms. Which brings up another problematic point: Kiwis don’t save money – they buy houses and live their lives in debt. Money flows out of the country and goes to develop other international economies.

The answers aren’t as obvious as they seem: work hard to promote science and engineering; work hard to develop new and cool things; work at changing the funding programs. The first two are possible, but the third is the critical component.