David Farrar has a good wee post laying the blame for the current b/s around the abolition of the Privy Council....

I've said in a number of posts that the reason that we're up the creek now is because the Govt. grossly over reacted to what was, in the end, a mere jurisdictional hearing...

I spent most of this week travelling the country with Paul Andrew and a few others presenting at the MS Security Summit series.

I mentioned a few things in my presso.. one was a book title worth grabbing.

As Nick notes, we had fantastic turn outs.

Nick notes a few experiences along the way as well... I guess I should add mine.

• The AirNZ check in system does indeed ROCK THIS WORLD. I have bagged AirNZ quite a bit in the past, but the Kiosk check system really is fantastic. The best ID to use is your Airpoints or Koru Club card. That way, if you are happy with a random seat assignment, yu can have your boarding pass in under 5 button presses. I'm a stickler for choosing my own seat though. Based something around the following heuristic (for 737s).
• Outside seat one row behind exit row only if no one is in the middle seat. The outside seat has no seat in front of it, but you really need the seat next door to be empty so you can put ya lappie on the tray table.
• Second preference are the aisle seats in row 1. Can stick your big legs into the corridor... and get off the damned plane first.
• Middle seat of an otherwise empty row of seats in the back 5 rows. By taking the middle seat you can often luck in and not have anyone seated next to you. This tip is even more important on Air NZs ever half empty trans pacific services.... always take the second seat in from the aisle towards the back. This gives you the best chance of keeping a group of others out of your row and thus allowing you to sleep, reclined, the whole way back.
• I could get CafeNet @ the Intercontinental..... but they were nice and upgraded me to their top floor rooms which have free net anyway. The intercontinental gets two thumbs up from me for net access.

Xbox 2 News
If you're interested in reading about the latest gossip on Xbox 2, then you'll want to visit xbreporter.com. One of the latest rumors on xbreporter discusses support for the .NET Framework:

• MSIL all the way
  The CPU for the Xbox 2 is rumoured to be designed to be a processor that can decode and execute instructions in Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) while at the same time being able to run x86 code, to remain compatible with Xbox  

from [http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2004/04/29/123041.aspx]

I'm out of town in Auckland at the moment... so I'm just leaving myself some reminders

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Lenn runs the evangelicals in the longhorn group (I think)....

As some one who is pretty evangelical day to day.... and who would love to make it a profession some day... this makes interesting reading.

http://www.glitteringgenerality.com/default.aspx?date=2004-04-21

Further to the on going NZPundit vs Russel Brown spat... the Pundit is calling for a Google Bomb

Who am I to deny the man his pleasures.... let's see if my Google Rank (currently 4) can do any good.

Herewith the Terzain Link

”Being recognized has never been easier for VIP patrons of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, Spain.

Like a scene out of a science-fiction movie, all it takes is a syringe-injected microchip implant for the beautiful men and women of the nightclub scene to breeze past a "reader" that recognizes their identity, credit balance and even automatically opens doors to exclusive areas of the club for them. “

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38038

Just made the steps to get my Jetstart ADSL changed to JetStream Surf....

Easy enough you'd think... all I'm doing is changing plans.....

NOPE!.... I have to wait until the 'anniversary date' of getting my ADSL connection before Telecom will do the change over. Which means, in turn, I have to go back to my ISP and ask them to keep my Jetstream account active for another 1/2 a month... which in turn costs me money....

Would someone please sort out the shitfight that must be Telecom's Billing System..... talk about Mickey Mouse... even the CSR said so.

.... Well $50 ain't big... but still.....

NZPundit is running competition bsed around taking the piss out of Russell Brown

What a great idea.... keep an eye out for my entry.

Stephen Rosenthal has posted about submitting a good bug report over at the Windows Mobile Blog.

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2004/04/19/116123.aspx

The biggest and most important thing in a bug report is reproducibility! If it can be repro'd it can be fixed almost guaranteed.

Nick and some of the Auckland DNUG crew went out for paintball today.... kinda reminded me to post my photos (and some words) about my fun with guns while in the US o' A earlier in the month.

I arrived in Seattle early for the MVP summit so my buddies and I decided to head out for some pistol shooting. We went to Wades Gunshop on Bel-Red Road, just down the road from the Redmond Campus. We hired a lane, paid our $12 for free range over the whole gun cabinet and set about firing every calibre they had bar one (the 500 Magnum which looked more like a handheld cannon).

We shot

• .22LR
• .38
• .357 Magnum
• 9mm
• .40
• .45

I think my favourite part of the day was emptying the whole clip (only 10 rounds these days) of a Glock Model 23 .40 cal pistol at 20 yards. Kinda makes you yearn to be an American and frightened to death of becoming so at the same time.

All in all it was a really fun day- I even wore my special g33k with a big handgun T-Shirt.

As you may already know I kicked off a discussion on the NZ .NET Mailing List late last week around the possiblity of running some free training on a community basis.

I've done some digging and there looks to be enough interest from both a student and instructor viewpoint to make it happen. The plan of attack will probably be to run it via Microsoft LiveMeeting. If you haven't played with LiveMeeting it's a bit of kit that Microsoft purchased off Placeware sometime last year. It allows powerpoiint presentations with live voice and application sharing over the internet in real time. MSDN uses it for their webcasts if you've ever watched one of those.

So anyway, the plan is to run some free training via LiveMeeting over the course of a month or two. The training will happen outside business hours either early in the morning (gotta give the option) or in the evening.

There are a whole load of potential parameters to the final course we could offer so what I'd like to do is solicit some feedback. If you are interested in participating in this community course please answer the following questions by posting me an email to chris(at)kognition.co.nz. I'll be collating the feedback and working on the final course proposal on Tusday night so please answer before Tuesday close of business. Just answer each question with the number and your answer.

1. What sort of time commitment can you make per week?
1 Hours
2 Hours
4 Hours

What is the best course time for you?
Before Work - 7:30am
After Work - 5:30pm
Early Evening - 6:30pm
Late Evening - 8:30pm

What sort of format would you like the course to take?
Lectures Only
Lectures and Labs
Labs Only

Which of the following topics would interest you (please put most important first if you choose more than one)?
ASP.NET
VB.NET
C#.NET
ADO.NET incl SQL Server 2000
Compact Framework
Windows and Smart Client Applications

Do you want the course to have an exam with a final mark?
Yes
No

Would you buy a textbook ($60-$150) if one were available for a course?
Yes
No

This lengthy article runs through, in some detail, the process the Sports Illustrated uses to get their digital photos from the field to production.

Looks like Mossad are having a go at getting New Zealand passports this time around. I'm impressed that our coppers actually nabbed them, one would have thought the Israelis should have been able to run rings around us.

Good to see the government 'treating it like any other case'. Bad to see them out on bail.... I mean can you say FLIGHT RISK! One has already escaped the country.

David Farrar has the first guess at numbers on the Civil Union Bill.... looks promising...

Let's hope we can convince a few more 'classically liberal' ACT members to support it.

Casey has been spending some time playing with neural nets and asks

“i am beating myself up for not learning quickly enough today. does this exist in the neural network world? a machine knowing that its training is going badly and that it needs to train differently?”

No comments on his blog means I'll add my 2c worth here.

The way I see it there are two possible approaches (in mainstream NN theory) that address the rate of training issue.

1. Inertia
While not really providing for the concept of a global track on learning rate, the use of an inertia value provides a useful mechanism for controlling learning rate in a localised fashion. Basically it aims to prevent local minima/maxima solutions from being found.

2. Evolving Neural Networks
This probably provides better for the idea that Casey is looking at. Evolving neural nets change their architecture- usually by adding nodes but sometime also layers- on the basis of the perceived ability to fit the problem. This fit-ability is in turn often determined by the rate at which the potential solution is being approached in training.

Anyway.... those are my thoughts...

Mike Hall is blogging about personalised g33k plates.

Mine is 'XML'.

I have a friend with 'GOATCX'.... now that is a little more concerning... in fact it's concerning if you even know what it means.