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Black gold, darker than night

Vanity Fair’s Sebastian Banger discusses the depraved conditions of the Niger delta, where plentiful oil is both a blessing and a curse. As US oil companies pump the light sweet crude, corrupt government officials embezzle over $300 billion of oil revenue, while delta Nigerians live in polluted squalor, without medicine or fresh water.

Many resort to bribes and bunkering (oil theft); even poorly-paid military are often on the take. Some of the disenfranchised have decided to resort to violence. Meanwhile worried oil experts around the world observe how the actions of twenty militants in speedboats can cause a gas-thirsty North America to slide into a recession:

“Every sector of society has been left to fend for itself. The airline industry, for example, is so slack in its maintenance that it has seen three catastrophic plane crashes in the past 16 months, which together have killed more than 300 people. The airport at Port Harcourt was shut down in 2005 after an incoming Air France flight plowed into a herd of cows that had wandered onto the runway; it still has not reopened. Tens of millions of people live in urban slums without water or sanitation, restaurants have to hire guards with AK-47s to protect the diners, and the levels of chaos and street violence rival that of many countries at war. A dead man lay on the street near my hotel for two days before someone finally came to take him away.”

Aspirations

I refuse to call them resolutions…I believe the word “resolution” should only come up when talking about computer screens.

# Relearn my native tongue.
# Learn how to shuffle cards properly (Bonus: Learn how to do the double lift).
# Get my P.Eng paperwork done.

iPhone launches, smartphone market flips out

With the gadget world enthralled with Apple’s new touchscreen musicphone announced yesterday afternoon at CES 2007, the rest of the smartphone market takes a dive.

RIM was the biggest casualty, with their stock dropping over $10 in half a day.

iphonemarketgraph.gif

And the phone is using the slow EDGE wireless Internet standard, and has no removable storage, all the while costing $500 with contract. The stock price of AT&T, the owner of Cingular Wireless, the exclusive provider for the Apple iPhone, only scooched up 1% or so. If anything, the Microsoft Zune (which is double the size and half the features of the iPhone, and MS just announced will be able to play games…in 2008) is the only real casualty here in the long term.

But it doesn’t matter – iPhone is already picking up the ladies: Silverlotus and Space Cadet are already coveting it.

Starting 2007 on a high note

…by watching Million Dollar Baby :'(

Seriously, had another great potluck with the cousins and the Four Sisters (my mother and three aunts, as they’re known and feared). Great food was to be had, including bulgogee, BBQ’ed veal, yee mein, sushi, and some Japanese plum wine.

The Four Sisters gave us a variety of odds and ends, including various pens taken from miscellaneous conventions, fruit, sachets of gourmet coffee, several sample cartons of toothpaste, and cans of salsa, wasabi mustard and pumpkin butter. They also wrapped up some of the leftover noodles and vegetables.

On the subway home, Silverlotus remarked, “Your family is really into food.”
I replied in the only way I could: “Yes, yes they are.”

Compact Calendar Canadian Version

A localized version of David Seah’s compact calendar.

The changes:

* populated calendar with Canadian public holidays
* populated calendar with provincial and territorial holidays (even Orangemen’s Day)
* fixed typo in titles of both Sunday versions to say “Week Starting Sunday”

Because while we think the United States is a very nice country, we don’t celebrate the 4th of July. We celebrate Canada Day:

Download 2007 Compact Calendar Canadian Version (English) (zipped Excel files)

Christmas haul

I got a Soligor tripod with quick-release everything and an institution-sized bottle of Bailey’s. Then came the electric blanket (surprisingly comfy), an electric razor (meticulously researched on Amazon), and a stainless steel desk clock/thermometer/hygrometer.

Finally I was down to one gift bag, which curiously had two wrapped boxes inside.

My wife insisted I open the larger one first – “Then you’ll understand the second box,” she explained. 

Inside the package was a Xbox Live one year membership and a Xbox Live Vision webcam.  In the other box was Test Drive Unlimited to play it on! Whatta sweetie.

Web 2.0 publicly debuts: It's not me, it's you

People are starting to see how modular and extensible the web actually is, TIME Magazine aside: YouTube played a part in a murder investigation when the Hamilton Police posted the security video of a fatal stabbing on the popular video sharing site. Apparently 34,000 people viewed the clip before the suspect turned himself in to the authorities.

Perhaps he was shamed by the comments, all which were most likely variations of “What a looser!” and “FAKE!”.

Wii all scream

Let me say this now: the Nintendo Wii is the first gaming console where my business associates will spontaneously talk about – and this is without me first broaching the subject of my glorious video game collection.

Maybe it’s because it’s a physical manifestation of Nintendo’s embrace of disruptive innovation and blue ocean strategy. Or maybe it’s because it’s freakin’ cool. It is everything a typical game console is not: it’s small, quiet, and uncomplicated.

I took several co-workers to check out the live Wii demonstration at Toronto Eatons Centre, and several came away saying that if they ever touched a game console, this would be it. Check this kid out playing a boxing game on the Wii:

People are getting so excited play this thing, there are reports worldwide of people accidentally breaking their television sets, fixtures, and even bystanders’ faces. I couldn’t help but notice that the Wiimotes at the demo had a thicker camera strap backing up the standard, thinner one:

Because finding patents can be painful

Darling Google has released Google Patent Search. This is an incredible boon for patent agents and intellectual property professionals searching for prior art in the USPTO database, because USPTO’s website frankly isn’t terribly good. For starters, the search engine didn’t dig very deeply into the documents themselves.

It’s so bad in fact that a cottage industry of patent search companies and services has sprung up. Our own law department retained a ridiculously expensive piece of software for the sole purpose of extracting patents from the USPTO for perusal.

Wired comments that this is definitely a search that caters to a very niche and exclusive audience. Perhaps this is yet another initiative, like eco-friendly power supplies, that Google hopes to reap externalities from. After all, now that full text searching on filed patents is fast, accurate and free to all, Google has just made the patent system a lot more transparent, making it more difficult for patent trolls to thrive.

UPDATE: Dennis Couch of Patently-O weighs in. The general consensus is that it’s fast, but not as accurate as they would prefer.

A novel affair

This will be my first bachelor and bachelorette auction. I assure you, however, that everything was above board and in fact for a good cause – specifically to build a school in Nepal, and grant 10-year scholarships to 6 Nepalese girls.

You see, after our work team saw John Wood speak at Power Within three months ago, our manager became empowered to help form the Toronto chapter of Wood’s charity, Room to Read. This fundraising auction, held at the ritzy Dominion Club, was a direct result from this formation.

My awesome friend Space Cadet graciously volunteered to be on the auction block, and as you can see from the photo, her twins were working the crowds that night. She was a bit nervous and I had to promise to be an “angel investor” should the auction not go well, but as you can see, she sold without any assistance for a respectable $850, the third highest hammer price of all the lovely lots. Heck, even James Wood put in a bid, threatening to “steal your Canadian women”.

Probably the only thing amiss was that Space Cadet’s “intro” song wasn’t Rage Against the Machine. Oh, and that 60lb gift basket full of chocolate at the silent auction that went for $300. That was just wrong.