notitia ratio procuratio

Way good.  I’ve just discovered that my house must be in a ’secluded pocket’ since it doesn’t appear in Google StreetView.  Which I’m kinda glad about, really.  Even a friend of mine’s house, which was only built in October last year and is in a brand new estate, appears on StreetView. 

Let’s face it though - someone needs to know where you live before StreetView is of real use, although I’m finding it handy for when I go to places I’ve not been before.  Although I do have privacy concerns.  Which is code for the fact that it’s hard enough to have an affair these days - what do the philanderers do if their car is photographed outside their mistress’s house?  It’s bad enough having to deal with ‘you took money out of the ATM at 2pm today at Toowong - what were you doing there?’.  Now you have photographic proof online.  Can we really trust Google any more?

Just as well I’ve never been into stamp collecting all that much…

Definitely in the ‘fun stuff’ category lately for me is the ‘Girl Genius’ webcomic.  There are lots of free webcomics out there, most of which have about zero art, less humour, and zip plot.  Girl Genius, though, I can appreciate (although I’m not a huge fan of the ‘paper dolls’).  Especially since I’m married to a Girl Genius, although perhaps not in a SteamPunk kind of way.

Let’s just say that if a girl with green hair & funny-looking swords wants to buy you coffee, run.  Just - run.

And showing how the new world can work - creative tweeps can follow Othar’s Twitter.  I’m sure none of these jobs existed when I was in High School…

OK well it’s probably no surprise to anyone but I’m a Dr Who fan.  In my defence, I’m a card-carrying geek so it’s kind of an occupational hazard.

Unfortunately last week my geek cred was shattered by the revelation that my PVR didn’t properly record the show on Sunday night.  Argh - and this is one of those shows where you really need to see all stories to understand the story arc that’s going on.  It’s not CSI where the same show is replayed each week.  On Dr Who - the writers have to be able to write!

Anyway - I had the pleasure of trying out the ABC’s iView.  They store the show as a downloadable broadcast for up to 11 days later than the original broadcast, so I was able to watch it through the notebook.  Better yet, I hooked the notebook up to the TV through the svideo cable, turned off the screensaver and cranked up the power options and it was - almost - as good as the real thing.  If I had hooked the sound cables up I could probably have had it go through my surround sound.  But, as it was I think I noted one item of pixelation, and no download pause while watching a 50-minute show. 

That in my books is both impressive and fantastic.  It’s still a beta service, but it worked out of the box for me and saved me some geek cred anyway.

Very happy to be invited to post a blog entry for CPA Australia on the Congress 2008 blog.  The post is to be ‘conversational’ - I wonder if they know how conversational I can be? - and will be about the social networking policy and procedure guide I am writing for CPA Australia.

Well, my setup for my mobile life is slowly coming together.  Firstly, I have a Blackberry for when I am out and about - full integration into Exchange server hosted by WebCentral.  It’s an expensive approach by the time Telstra and Webcentral have their cut, but it works well and is my primary mobile device.  Then I have two laptops - a Dell Vostro 1500 (the luggable for power-computing) and an HP Mini-Note 2300 for mobile computing (it’s small, light, and light-powered but does what’s necessary - mostly).  I have an HP Media drive that I use to synch files between the luggable and the HP - I’m currently using SyncToy from evil Microsoft to synchronise the files, although I did try SyncBack as well.  SyncToy is generally easier to use but its reputation is not as solid as SyncBack’s - my trouble with SyncBack is its complete lack of feedback as to what it’s actually synced and what it hasn’t.  I use GMail for my personal email, and it runs on my mobile based upon the Google Apps hosted solution. 

I also use Office Document Imaging to convert all my filenotes to PDF, so that they become part of my backup routine.  Ironically, the only thing I don’t keep electronically like this is my accounting records, as one day I may actually hand them over to an accountant.  And much to my annoyance I continue to use Office 2007 after a run-in with Open Office - it completely lost a major spreadsheet on me by overwriting a filename and annoying me somewhat - also Open Office files (native) don’t seem to be indexed by Copernic, my desktop searching engine.  I use ThinkingRock to manage my tasks and projects and todo lists (I did revert to Outlook tasks, which was good for mobility, but bad for trying to manage projects and generally implement GTD).  The new version of ThinkingRock 2 is much more polished so I am coming back to the TR fold (I was silly for going away, even if I did get mobility out of Outlook tasks). 

Finally, I use Evernote for little snippets of information that I collect and need to refer to, or that I stumble across while I’m researching stuff for papers I’m presenting and so on.  What is fantastic about Evernote is it’s ability to bring a lot of material together in one place, treat it the same, tag it, and bring it back, and do it from multiple vectors (PC, Mac, Internet, mobile phone) and keep it all in synch, for a reasonable price.  If used well, it can be very good.  A major difference from version 2 is the lack of version control.  I also originally came across Evernote while searching for a personal wiki approach, and EverNote doesn’t really support that type of functionality, it keeps it simple stupid.  I now use WikidPad to do that sort of thing.

Overall, Evernote is a great repository for keeping research together, and keeping things in synch between multiple devices (as you can see above, a fair chunk of my setup is devoted to synching stuff between machines.So it’s a great tool for doing what says it does.  Unfortunately it means I no have Yet Another Place with information stored - files (which I index with Copernic), some websites and now Evernote.  I wonder if my stuff in Evernote will convert over in a few years time - hopefully it’s successful and continues to operate, otherwise I will have a lot of information contained in Evernote that can’t be migrated to anything else.

I suppose in some ways it’s not unlike Lotus Notes, ironically, in its original syncing format, although it’s not collaborative I guess.  It is personally focussed.  Still it’s worth my $A47 for a premium subscription, and I’ll think about where it goes from here.  It’s a good tool to add to my suite of stuff I use, but it’s probably not going to be my nirvana for file and information management any time soon. 

Maybe one day I’ll get there.

I seem to be doing an awful lot of work for CPA Australia lately - which is good, I kinda like the place.

On 26 August I am presenting a session entitled ‘Communicating Financials to management:  developing effective reporting mechanisms’.  Apparently this session needs to explain:

• How to develop effective reporting mechanisms that ensures data of high integrity and quality
• Responding to management information needs: how to develop a process that ensures timely response
• Other key reporting and systems issues that affect how information is presented and used

Hmmm.  Should be quite a trick. Ah well, turning my mind to this thought at the moment.  Looking forward to it - apparently I present at the Royal on the Park.

As is my usual practice, I’ve uploaded the brochure here.

We had our ITM CoE meeting on this immediate past Tuesday, where in a case of life imitating social media I got to meet Mick Leyden in-the-flesh, as it were, after meeting on Twitter. 

In the course of discussions around the table, one topic that came up - quite apart from the topic of, somehow, Viagra - was using tag clouds as a way of communicating the big issues to clients from interviews.  One of our members, Shauna, had thought of tag clouds for blogs, but not in the context of using it to show a client and reflect back what they have said.  I recently used the tag cloud, www.wordle.net, to demonstrate to a client what I’d gleaned from my one-on-one interviews with them. 

It was really helpful to just demonstrate what had been said.  Interestingly, the conclusions of priorities after three hours of analysis were just about the same as just running the text through the tag cloud generator.  But of course, less valid.

Anyhoo - if you want a way to brighten up the results of interviews, I would heartily recommend this as a new way to communicate the message.

I presented for CPA Australia on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, firstly in Sydney, and then in Melbourne.  The topic was ‘Optimising your financial reporting systems for long-term value’, and was part of their streamlining finance processes conference.

Overall the presentations went fairly well.  There’s always a conflict between war stories, which are interesting and helpful, and content, which is helpful.  I try not to have a lecture, but I still managed to run out of time both times.  Note to self:  cut down, cut down, cut down.

Anyhoo, I promised that I’d upload an example survey tool and my speaker notes, so they are attached to this blog post.

You can download the Speaker Notes here, and you can download the full presentation here. The speaker notes are just the dot points I intended to cover off in the presentation.

The example survey can be downloaded here.

I stayed at the Sydney Marriott overnight - that was quite nice:

If you attended, please feel free to give feedback.  I hope something was obtained from the presentation, and if there are questions please feel free to give me a call.

Blogging from the back of the taxi, I’m just reminded to blog about the intriguing case I alerted to last night. I am lecturing at QUT for about seven weeks starting in about September on IT Governance. The first half is being presented by Bill Singleton, a senior associate with Allens Arthur Robertson, and he is basically presenting the law to them as it relates to ensuring the good governance of IT.

I attended last night to be introduced to the class, and I stayed for the lecture. One of the interesting cases was to me the Dow Jones v Gutnick case. From what I understood, Dow Jones implied in their newsletter that Gutnick was involved in insider trading. This did not sit well with Mr Gutnick who, even though the newsletter was written in New York and uploaded to the net to a server in New York, sued them in Victoria for defamation.

My first reaction was that the suit would fail for lack of jurisdiction - Victoria is not New York after all.

Apparently Gutnick won on the basis that the defamation occurs where the download took place - Victoria. And the kicker is that, because of the bilateral agreements with the US, Gutnick then had an enforceable court order that he could pursue in the States.

When I mentioned this to my lawyer wife (I’m certainly no lawyer) her reaction was ‘So? That makes sense, otherwise you’d forum shop.’

Technorati Tags: Defamation,law,blogging,download

My view is that it’s rather bad - you write something, put it on the net, and any jurisdiction where there is a bilateral agreement - or where you want to do business - could result in an enforceable court order.

I mean, what if you innocently break the law in another jurisdiction? China, for example? Admittedly this was a defamation case, but even so it scares and annoys me a little.

I suspect there may be implications for corporate bloggers there.

I may misunderstand, after all I was in a lecture late at night. However to me it seems a classic case of, once again, the law getting in the way of progress.

A Rostrum speech I prepared back in 2003.

Good afternoon chairman, members, and guests. “The Age of Fear”. It conjures up images of a dark, bleak future, where we live in perpetual terror, where an indiscriminate Death steals our souls. An age where fear rules our waking moments, and nightmares rule our sleeping ones. Since the event that has now become labelled as “9/11″, and closer to home and just as shocking, Bali, journalists have been quick to say that we live in The Age of Fear.

Do we really live in the age of fear? Must we consider our future dark and bleak? I think it is not as bleak as all that. Our times are no more troubled than those that have come before – in fact, should we have been born in almost any age in the past, we should have more cause for sheer terror than now in almost any aspect – our ability to conduct our lives in peace, to lead healthy lives, and to think freely. We should then reflect upon this, and consider whether we really do live in the Age of Fear by comparison.

During the Hundred Years War between France and England in the 14^th and 15^th centuries, it was said that some children’s great-great-great-grandfathers, and all their ancestors between, knew only war and not peace. War was a brutal thing, where you would be hacked at and left to die slowly on the field of battle. There were no POW’s – if you were left wounded on the battlefield, and your side lost, you were quickly put to death. Devices to kill and maim were fiendish – hot sand was poured onto the besiegers of towns and cities, where it lodged in the Knight’s armour and scalded upturned faces. While he was dancing around trying to dislodge the sand, he was cut down with arrows or bludgeoned to death with whatever was handy.

You could hardly blame the besiegers, though, for the much-vaunted “code of chivalry” entitled any besieger to rape, pillage and put to death the inhabitants of any town that did not open its gates to the besiegers.

More recently, Coventry was devastated during World War 2, with the Blitz in full swing. During the first night of the Blitz in London, 2000 people died. And those that didn’t had to endure the next eight months of the blitz. Certainly to be alive in any of these times was to live in fear of other nations’ bellicosity. Today we have some of these fears, but they are today more the exception rather than the rule.

Medically, as well, we have far less to fear. Until the end of the Renaissance, “doctors” had endured extensive testing, examination, and schooling in the science of healing. That which they studied was ancient, revered, and complete bollocks. Their medicine dated back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. All medicine was based upon the theory of humours, which said the body was made up of four humours, and when they were out of balance, the body needed to be recalibrated through a good bit of blood-letting, sweating, or purgatives. Not surprisingly, the cure was often worse than the disease, and physicians were not popular people.

During the times of the Black Plague, when over a third of Europe died, medicine was powerless to help. The theory of humours said that you daren’t bathe, as that would open the pores on your skin and all your humour would leak out, and the plague would leak in.

The most popular theory for the reasons behind the black plague was that the Jews were in league with Satan and were planning on taking over the world. The fact that the Jews were dying in equal numbers did not appear to rate a mention and so, since they couldn’t find Satan, the great unwashed rose up in great numbers and promptly slew any Jews they could find. Of course the great unwashed continued to die in great numbers. Perhaps they should have looked to the filth, muck and completely unhygienic conditions in which they lived for the cause and gotten a broom and a bar of soap instead.

Now, up until the end of the 19^th century or so, the general rule was that people with the longest lifespans were women whose husbands died in the many wars. And those with the shortest lifespans were women whose husbands continued to live. Yes, death in childbirth was pretty much the number one cause of death in adult females. Complete ignorance of the process, and a prevailing view that it was a “woman’s business” and that death in childbirth was punishment for Eve’s carryings on in the Garden of Eden, tended to result in a low batting average for this most natural of processes.

A boil today could mean a death-shroud tomorrow – and this was the case until fairly recent times. Medically, then, it is fairly clear that our forebears lived in a time of abject terror.

As for freedom of thought, well, there really hasn’t been any of note until recent times. If you disagreed with the ruling classes, then you were pretty likely to die in a very nasty way. Witches – usually illiterate old women with a penchant for boiling toads and turning them into a nice curry – were slaughtered in their thousands if they admitted to being witches after days of torture. Of course, if they didn’t admit to being witches after days of torture, they obviously were witches and were put to death immediately.

In 1819, citizens of England protested that they wanted England to return to freedom of speech and representation in Parliament. In response to such dangerous ideas, cavalry charged the assembled men, women and children and killed eleven, and wounded hundreds.

Closer to home, racial intolerance and prejudice could be disastrous. In 1880, in Kingsborough – on the North Queensland goldfields near Chillagoe, 57 Chinese miners were killed with picks, shovels and spears by white miners because of accusations of claim-jumping. Not really speaking English probably didn’t help their defence.

So, whether you were a witch in the middle ages, a citizen of England in the 19^th century, or a Chinese miner on the Australian goldfields, you could be guaranteed of at least one thing: you were very right to be afraid, very, very afraid.

So now in conclusion, let us reflect. There is now far more peace now than there ever has been in the world, and you are far less likely to die in war or from acts of terror than your forebears were. Medically, too, we are without equal throughout the ages. Diseases of yesterday that would kill and maim for life are today often less than inconveniences. Our chances of catching some disgusting skin disease and dying are far less than those of our forebears. Finally, we must trust and hope that in today’s environment, acts of barbarity as payment for being different or for expressing ideas and thoughts that do not conform with the mainstream are rarer than in the past.

So we should contrast the age in which we live with the ages of those that have gone before. No doubt there are times when our future seems dark and bleak, but we still have a bright beacon of hope ahead of us. Our forebears truly have lived in the Age of Fear. By comparison, we do not.