Labour Weekend Trip to the Kaimanawas including Mount Urchin to Waipakihi Hut.
Mini Trip report included with Album.
Mount Urchin + Umukarikari Weekend
Ferg’s Life Snippets
Short little posts on Life’s little events, experiences, and other observations
Strawberry Field + Other Photos
Short stop at Clevedon Strawberries + Leisurely Sunday afternoon
Details of the 3rd Facebook Assimilation
This post is skippable unless one is really really bored or perhaps insanely curious. The rather Yawn inducing details leading up to my re-assimilation into the faceborg collective… Continue reading “Details of the 3rd Facebook Assimilation”
Faceborg Assimilated
As as I said in an earlier post, I have recently had to capitulate and join Facebook (proper) amid much escalating and heated (“Angry” and “Shouty”) protestation from different, quite distinct (Separate) circle of friends and acquaintances for not being contactable via facebook.
To my friends, I just wish to say, I really appreciate having you all as friends. I really do, however on a personal level, I have difficulties with supporting a company like facebook considering their past and present behaviour and have concerns that we are collectively allowing a single for-profit minded company too much power over our lives collectively.
Anyway, as of writing this, 10 people have discovered my profile and have since “friended” me on my regular faceborg profile. if I know you and you want to try and dissuade me from leaving the faceborg collective for a 3rd time, now’s a good time to go to profile and “friend” me. (ugh, hate using the verb in that context)
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See Also…
Feeding Time
Feeding time on command. In Cambridge, Waikato.
Web presence and related matters.
The websites.
Will be doing a little bit of house keeping on both peak.nz and nui.nz. Will prime nui.nz to be a full blown personal photo gallery (as it appears to have evolved towards that direction) and add more description and details into each Photo Album. Have had the odd comments about my photo galleries lacking any textual information and I can’t really argue with that. While I am not one for writing up Full Blown Trip reports, it would be nice to describe our experiences in words to supplement the photos.
I still have www.fergusyoung.com, which has to-date not been deployed. Thinking I will make that a front end for my identity on the net with links to both peak.nz (personal blog) and nui.nz (personal photo gallery)
Faceborg
“We are Faceborg, You Will Be Assimilated… Your mental and cultural distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile…!”
So here is us collectively handing over (and increasingly continually doing so) power and control over our personal data, the Web and ultimately our lives FROM ourselves as a collective to be concentrated in the hands of a single power hungry for-profit corporation intent on world domination…
…Really, are we honestly actually comfortable with doing that?
Anyway, have had to re-board the Faceborg mothership again after 3 years off of it, courtesy of increasing protestation from several distinct group of friends / acquaintances for not being contactable via facebook.
Had existed on Faceborg messenger for a few months as a compromise, but recent bugs in the system, after replacing my phone, have caused multiple ghost messenger identities to be created off of the same phone number, with no known way to combine them back together. Great for Facebook as it helps inflate their monthly user count numbers across their whole platform, to impress shareholders and investors.
As per the last two times I had (and later shut) a facebook account, I’m Looking for any excuse to close this one as I don’t agree with how Facebook entity has behaved, and don’t particularly like the proprietary – locked-in nature of it
Too close to reality
The Original piece appeared to come from here http://www.math.psu.edu/tseng/progcycle.html
1. Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free.
2. Product is tested. 20 bugs are found.
3. Programmer fixes 10 of the bugs and explains to the testing department that the other 10 aren’t really bugs.
4. Testing department finds that five of the fixes didn’t work and discovers 15 new bugs.
5. Repeat three times steps 3 and 4.
6. Due to marketing pressure and an extremely premature product announcement based on overly-optimistic programming schedule, the product is released.
7. Users find 137 new bugs.
8. Original programmer, having cashed his royalty check, is nowhere to be found.
9. Newly-assembled programming team fixes almost all of the 137 bugs, but introduce 456 new ones.
10. Original programmer sends underpaid testing department a postcard from Fiji. Entire testing department quits.
11. Company is bought in a hostile takeover by competitor using profits from their latest release, which had 783 bugs.
12. New CEO is brought in by board of directors. He hires a programmer to redo program from scratch.
13. Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free.
Weapons of Mass Distraction
Bread and circuses I tell ya, bread and circuses I tells ya! Ye masses are addicted to Pokemon Go. More distraction and entertainment by the ruling classes to keep ye mindless numb skulls happy and away from the real and wider issues that ultimately affect us all.
Clevedon Scenic Reserve shots
Stroll around Clevedon Reserve, photos here… https://nui.nz/2016/08/07/clevedon-scenic/
Duck test on Residential NZ property
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
No matter what angle I look at the whole situation (specifically Auckland’s market), it’s a bubble. If I look from the top, it’s a bubble, if I look at it from the side, the bottom, the front, even at it crooked on the piss, it’s a bubble. You consult the legion of “Experts” whom point out to you and say “see, look!” Auckland is not a bubble, and who are quick to offer their concocted explanation as to why it’s not a bubble. But even when I put my head against their straight out arm trying to align my vision with their straightened out index finger to what they are pointing out to. I see a bubble, I’m just not seeing nor registering the same as what they’re (claim) to be seeing.
Whether this holds any predictive value as to what the housing market will do next… No it most certainly does not. Looking deeper, the whole Global Financial system is just plain broken beyond any recognition. To have a given asset class’ prices appreciating at a several fold wages, especially for the time it’s being going on for is a rather irregular event. (In addition to that, Traditional financial analytical models such as those found in Fundamental analysis and especially Technical Analyst just seem to hold little weight these days)
The (so called) bubble will perhaps only (so called) “burst” when no one is looking and the nay sayers have stopped saying “nay”, the legion of masses who missed out finally cease continually wailing “bubble” at the top of their voices and resign themselves to high house prices (“Acceptance”), right at that point (perhaps) the rug may or may not suddenly be pulled out from under the frothy market by some invisible hand. Just like the Oil market, the commentators were saying that Oil will never come down, propped up by China’s growing middle class. It was when cries for government intervention ceased and had given way to “acceptance” (that Oil was going to stay high) by the masses, eventually the media got sick of reporting on it, Oil pricing silently slipped out the back door and went south (rapidly) after period of price pattern consolidation.
And as a further side note, perhaps in a rather jaded way, those crying foul at the house prices (being the commentators who flood sites like interest.co.nz) are perhaps unwittingly helping to fan the bubbly house euphoria.
Fonterra #431AM
A little promotional (“Gimmick”) photo for Fonterra’s #431AM theme taken at Fieldays at the Fonterra Tent, Richie is super imposed on the picture.
Fonterra Tent’s always been popular with the folks. (Prior years, they were giving out cups, fridge magnets, etc). Probably a little bit less this time, but they were certainty still giving out tons of free Yoghurts and product samples which are always appreciated by visitors to their tent.
New VW Speed Camera Vans
Short little note, appears that the NZ Police are changing over to using VW / Volkswagen Transporter vans as their speed camera vehicle of choice.
Freepost to US from any where in the world?
Got this interesting bit of correspondence…
“No Postage Necessary if mailed to the United States”
International free-reply postage?? Would NZ Post actually honour this?
WordPress Carousel / Photo viewer issues.
Still trying to sort out the Photo Viewer / Carousel on this website. Have to admit, I’m not particularly happy with it, it’s from the Normal WordPress.com “Jetpack” plugin. Issues include…
- Messes with the browsers’ back button. (Each picture viewed will create an entry in the history, so if a user tried to go back from a post, the user ends up having cycle through all the pics again!)
- Not True “fullscreen”. On Mobile devices, the picture may come out microscopic. I’ve edited the border parameters to make it more acceptable, but still not completely happy with it.
“The web we have to save” – Hossein Derakhshan
Messenger (FB)
So here it is, apparently one can sign up (using their phone) to FB Messenger without having to create a profile on the Main Faceborg Mothership.
Had read this evening that people could now use Messenger without having to sign up to Faceborg itself and that the ability to do this was now global (Not just limited to a few countries), I had tried last year to join without a facebook account, but the App at the time still wanted me to sign up to a fully fledged faceborg account and I promptly removed it from my phone.
Tonight I downloaded the App again for my Android phone, selected the “Not on Facebook” Messenger sign up option and was in (while dutifully declining it access to my address book). It didn’t take long for people to discover that I was on there and start sending me messages and having friends from different circles adding me into their groups.
No, I’m still NOT going to board the main faceborg mothership and create a profile there (on facebook’s main platform). I realise that faceborg has now got a hold of my phone number and name and I remain unwilling to give it any more than that. I will continue to use this web domain for sticking up event and vacation photos and other such memorabilia and it is this web domain which will continue to be my main point of presence on the Internet.
Hopefully, being on Messenger should be enough to stop the gnashing of teeth that I regularly get from several circle of (well meaning) friends for not being on faceborg, while they try to assimilate me into the faceborg collective. It’s a workable compromise at least for the time being (while I continue to hope one day, that we will see a unified standard for all of this instant messaging (Corporate personal data collection) palaver that seem to now exist on my phone (Messenger, Google Chat, WeChat, etc))
It’s clear from my few hours perusing Messenger that the task to pull you lot away from the corporate platform for social event arranging is nigh impossible, faceborg has you all firmly held by your balls. Pa-ping! Now I know why everyone is steering in to their phones. Pa Ping! I’m going to stop throwing time and money into building an alternative for arranging small group events, it’s just not going to work.
Like WeChat, my use of Messenger is going to be primarily read only to follow any announcements, events, etc, with responses from myself only where required (confirming attendence, etc)
Let the Pa-ping’ing begin!
(In fact my phone has been pa-ping’ing non stop for the last two blooming hours (from the point that I signed up)… going to turn off WiFi on my phone so I can get some sleep… )
Scorchio
Air conditioning fails at work + Sealed space with no way to open the windows = Scorchio. 28°C
Believe it or not, I wasn’t the one who broke first, the Engineers Next door capitulated first (they had the hottest room at 29°C) and the Engineering Manager (Who was understandably was pretty enraged about the heat) hopped down to Bunnings and kindly bought the entire office some fans.
Pictured is the Software Development office from where I set at my desk…
Faceborg
28th October 2016 – Have had to finally capitulate amid much (quite heated and “shouty”) protestation at my lack thereof and get assimilated by faceborg as detailed in this article.
Original post below. My views on facebook still firmly stand…
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In answer to a fairly regular query I receive: “Why aren’t you on facebook?”
While facebook as a platform may be considered the best thing since sliced bread to many, I have to admit, I disagree with how the sole company behind the platform has behaved on several counts and have elected not to support them nor their behaviour by staying off of their platform.
May be if “facebook” as a medium was instead a de-centralised and inter-operable communication standard (with a choice of providers, much like we have with Email) rather than a proprietary medium control by a single for-profit motivated entity (whose natural motivations are profits ahead of any concern for their users and the world at large), then perhaps, I would indeed see myself using “facebook”.
I will also mention that I am particularly uncomfortable (actually to be honest, “Alarmed” would be more accurate) about how we collectively appear to be handing (by virtue of providing them our personal data) over so much power and control over our our lives, and the Internet in general to a single for-profit corporation such as facebook. I often do wonder whether or not any one has stopped to think whether so much power over our personal data, the internet and ultimately our lives in general concentrated in the hands of a single profit orientated entity is really a good idea for us collectively in the long run?
There is this long held saying that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, have we all forgotten about this somehow?
It is for these reasons (and several others) why I prefer (and have chosen) to maintain my own homepage as opposed to handing over personal data to the likes of facebook whom I have little trust in as a custodian of such data.
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See also…