Perhaps the most annoying feature of the iPhone is its recessed headphones jack:

This miserable little design decision has spawned an entire bloody industry of headphones adapters just so that you can use your own preferred set of headphones with the thing (though admittedly some headphones adapters are way cooler than others). Me, I preferred a slightly cheaper hack. And by hack, I mean hacksaw.

Process:

1. G’day, where’s the cheese?Get a kitchen knife.
2. Use kitchen knife obtained from step 1 to cut off the end of the rubber sheath at the end of your headphones plug.

Et voilà! Headphones that fit in rather nicely to that stupid jack. It also seems that a few other people have done this as well, but they applied slightly more rigourous methods than me (i.e. they used one of those “proper knives” rather than, say, a kitchen knife).

It's entirely stupid that we have to do this in the first place, but on the bright side, it does solve one of the only major annoyances I've had with the thing, which elevates the iPhone from being "pretty damn good" to "near perfect" in my eyes. One hopes that Apple won't be repeating this particular design decision for their next iPhone revision.

On the 19th of January, I left Sydney’s beautiful shores for a holiday in four parts: the Australian Open, the Foundations of Open Media Software (FOMS) conference, Linux.conf.au, and Kiwi Foo Camp. I’m in the middle of writing up about the conferences, so this is the first small blog entry in a series of four.

The Australian Open had upset-after-upset this year, being the first one in a very long time where neither the first nor second seeds made it through to the final. We had a five-day ground pass that we didn’t quite use all five days of, but still managed to catch a couple of fantastic matches on it:

• James Blake vs Marin Cilic: all brawns and no brain. There’s so much to like about two big guys always serving stuff at over 200km/h, and the only tactic is to just hit stronger and harder than the other guy. (“If violence doesn’t solve your problem, you’re not using enough of it.”)

• Hanley & Paes vs Bopanna and Ram: It’s amazing watching the top double seeds’ reaction speed at the net: you realise just how much innate talent these guys have, because no amount of training is going to make you that quick.

• The Woodies vs Pat Cash and John Fitzgerald: I’m glad I got to see Woodbridge and Woodforde play at least once in my life. Now I’d just like to see a mixed legends pair of Agassi and Graf…

• Rafael Nadal vs Jo-Wilfried Tsonga: Ah, our precious semi-finals ticket. I expected this to be a three-set match; I just didn’t think it’d be a three-set match where Nadal lost. (When was the last time Nadal lost in three sets to anybody?) Tsonga was playing quite possibly the best tennis I’ve ever seen in my life. Even The Scud playing in his best form couldn’t have matched Tsonga that night.

It’ll be interesting to see whether Lleyton Hewitt regains a better reputation amongst Australians after this year’s Open, thanks to his marathon five-set win against Marcos Baghdatis that finished at 4:33am. It’s amazing how much the media can distort reality: most people forget that Hewitt was #1 in the world for two years running, before Roger Federer came onto the scene, and is probably Australia’s best player in the past thirty to forty years. Pat Rafter never made it to #1; Pat Cash never made it to #1. Arguably Hewitt created some of the controversies himself, but I’m still amazed that so many Australians hold serious animosity toward him.

Tennis is one of those sports where watching it on TV doesn’t give you any indication of just how fast the balls are flying around, how fast a 200km/h serve really is, how fast the players are moving on the court, and how fast they’re reacting. I’m very glad to say that two friends I went with to the Australian Open had never seen a live tennis match before, and both of them loved it.

As well as plain ol’ tennis, we did of course take in a lot of the Melbourne culture, visiting many of the fine cafés and rustic alleyways in the city, heading north to the Yarra Valley for a day, going to the markets at Southbank, and eating pancakes at Stokers. One highlight was seeing James Morrison and Deni Hines at the Palms in the Crown Casino. I think our little group of four at the Palms were the youngest people in the entire audience… by about a decade. Morrison’s amusing obsession with his new vocoder keyboard and Deni Hines’s majestic voice made for a fantastic night of jazz.

All in all, my little Melbourne holiday proved to be a ton of fun and be incredibly relaxing at the same time. This was all good days indeed, since I needed a ton of energy to survive through the next week…

On the 19th of January, I left Sydney’s beautiful shores for a holiday in four parts: the Australian Open, the Foundations of Open Media Software (FOMS) conference, Linux.conf.au, and Kiwi Foo Camp. I’m in the middle of writing up about the conferences, so this is the first small blog entry in a series of four.

The Australian Open had upset-after-upset this year, being the first one in a very long time where neither the first nor second seeds made it through to the final. We had a five-day ground pass that we didn’t quite use all five days of, but still managed to catch a couple of fantastic matches on it:

• James Blake vs Marin Cilic: all brawns and no brain. There’s so much to like about two big guys always serving stuff at over 200km/h, and the only tactic is to just hit stronger and harder than the other guy. (“If violence doesn’t solve your problem, you’re not using enough of it.”)

• Hanley & Paes vs Bopanna and Ram: It’s amazing watching the top double seeds’ reaction speed at the net: you realise just how much innate talent these guys have, because no amount of training is going to make you that quick.

• The Woodies vs Pat Cash and John Fitzgerald: I’m glad I got to see Woodbridge and Woodforde play at least once in my life. Now I’d just like to see a mixed legends pair of Agassi and Graf…

• Rafael Nadal vs Jo-Wilfried Tsonga: Ah, our precious semi-finals ticket. I expected this to be a three-set match; I just didn’t think it’d be a three-set match where Nadal lost. (When was the last time Nadal lost in three sets to anybody?) Tsonga was playing quite possibly the best tennis I’ve ever seen in my life. Even The Scud playing in his best form couldn’t have matched Tsonga that night.

It’ll be interesting to see whether Lleyton Hewitt regains a better reputation amongst Australians after this year’s Open, thanks to his marathon five-set win against Marcos Baghdatis that finished at 4:33am. It’s amazing how much the media can distort reality: most people forget that Hewitt was #1 in the world for two years running, before Roger Federer came onto the scene, and is probably Australia’s best player in the past thirty to forty years. Pat Rafter never made it to #1; Pat Cash never made it to #1. Arguably Hewitt created some of the controversies himself, but I’m still amazed that so many Australians hold serious animosity toward him.

Tennis is one of those sports where watching it on TV doesn’t give you any indication of just how fast the balls are flying around, how fast a 200km/h serve really is, how fast the players are moving on the court, and how fast they’re reacting. I’m very glad to say that two friends I went with to the Australian Open had never seen a live tennis match before, and both of them loved it.

As well as plain ol’ tennis, we did of course take in a lot of the Melbourne culture, visiting many of the fine cafés and rustic alleyways in the city, heading north to the Yarra Valley for a day, going to the markets at Southbank, and eating pancakes at Stokers. One highlight was seeing James Morrison and Deni Hines at the Palms in the Crown Casino. I think our little group of four at the Palms were the youngest people in the entire audience… by about a decade. Morrison’s amusing obsession with his new vocoder keyboard and Deni Hines’s majestic voice made for a fantastic night of jazz.

All in all, my little Melbourne holiday proved to be a ton of fun and be incredibly relaxing at the same time. This was all good days indeed, since I needed a ton of energy to survive through the next week…

So now that I’m back from my f*ck-off-awesome trips to Melbourne and New Zealand (more on that later when I get a chance to blaerg about it), I am greeted with the following lovely selection of books from amazon.com:



I guess I’ll be doing some bedtime reading for the next few weeks. (Note that I’m not actually a games programmer by trade—nor really a C++ programmer these days—but games coding tends to have interesting constraints such as high performance and memory management, which encourages a much better understanding of lower-level problems.) I’m a little of the way through Refactoring to Patterns, and it’s great so far.

In other news, I think these three books in a row fit the definition of Alanic rather well:



Seriously, I didn’t move ‘em next to each other or anything. I especially love it how Java in a Nutshell looks like it’s about 1,000 pages. Nutshell my arse.

So now that I’m back from my f*ck-off-awesome trips to Melbourne and New Zealand (more on that later when I get a chance to blaerg about it), I am greeted with the following lovely selection of books from amazon.com:



I guess I’ll be doing some bedtime reading for the next few weeks. (Note that I’m not actually a games programmer by trade—nor really a C++ programmer these days—but games coding tends to have interesting constraints such as high performance and memory management, which encourages a much better understanding of lower-level problems.) I’m a little of the way through Refactoring to Patterns, and it’s great so far.

In other news, I think these three books in a row fit the definition of Alanic rather well:



Seriously, I didn’t move ‘em next to each other or anything. I especially love it how Java in a Nutshell looks like it’s about 1,000 pages. Nutshell my arse.

I’m going to be doing a small bit of cityhopping in the next few weeks:

• 19th to 23rd of January: in Melbourne for the Australian Open,
• 24th to 25th of January: in Melbourne for FOMS (Foundations of Open Media Software),
• 26th to 28th of January: more Australian Open in Melbourne,
• 29th to 31st of January: in Melbourne for Linux.conf.au,
• 1st to 3rd of February: in Warkworth, New Zealand for Kiwi Foo Camp.

If you’re reading this and will be in Melbourne or Warkworth on those dates, drop me an email and let’s go drinking be civilised!

I’m going to be doing a small bit of cityhopping in the next few weeks:

• 19th to 23rd of January: in Melbourne for the Australian Open,
• 24th to 25th of January: in Melbourne for FOMS (Foundations of Open Media Software),
• 26th to 28th of January: more Australian Open in Melbourne,
• 29th to 31st of January: in Melbourne for Linux.conf.au,
• 1st to 3rd of February: in Warkworth, New Zealand for Kiwi Foo Camp.

If you’re reading this and will be in Melbourne or Warkworth on those dates, drop me an email and let’s go drinking be civilised!

This is a Public Service Announcement for Australians: if you’re looking for mobile broadband access for your laptop (and what geek isn’t?), Vodafone are doing a pretty spectacular deal at the moment for ‘net access via their 3G/HSDPA network.

For $39/month, you get 5GB of data; no time limits; no speed caps; and fallback from 3G to GPRS in regional areas where HSDPA isn’t available yet. It’s a fantastic deal for people who live in metropolitan areas and work on the road a lot.

The main catch is that it’s a 24-month contract, so is a somewhat long time to be locked in to a plan. However, I have a feeling that no other mobile Internet offering is going to be competitive with 5GB for $40/month within the next two years. (Hell, $39/month for decent mobile Internet access is competitive with even some fixed-line ADSL2 providers.) One other small catch is that you also can’t use multiple devices on the plan: it’s tied to the single SIM card that you purchase with the plan. So, all you cool kids with 3G/GPRS-capable mobile phones, you can’t include that device on part of the bundle (looks sadly at iPhone). Other than that, it’s really a pretty bloody good deal.

To compare this with other plans:

• Vodafone themselves offer a craptacular 100MB for $29/month, which is barely enough to just check email these days. (And that doesn’t include the modem, which is another $200). A mere 1GB of data is $59/month, or $99 per month with no contract!

• Telstra are even worse (this is my surprised face): $59 for 200MB. I’ll say that again: $59 per month for 200MB. 1GB is $89.

• Bigpond (who are different from Telstra¹) offer vaguely competitive plans if you’re OK with a 10-hour-per-month time limit: that goes for $35/month. (This translates to around 30 minutes per business day, which may be OK if you just hop online occasionally to check email.) The $35 plan is the only timed plan, though: other than that, it’s $55 for 200MB (puke), or $85 for 1GB.

• I can’t even find out whether Optus have mobile broadband plans available. Comments?

• Virgin Mobile Broadband used to be pretty spectacular at $10/month for 1GB, and is still somewhat OK at $80/month for the same 1GB if it’s bundled with a phone plan. Considering that Vodafone’s $39/month for 5GB, you can still pair their deal with a phone plan of your choice and have 5GB instead of 1GB, though.

• Three (or 3, or whatever) just launched the next best alternative with their new X-Series plans. Their Gold plan is $30/month for 1GB, and their Platinum plan is $40/month for 2GB. Interestingly, the X-Series plans give you a ton of free Skype minutes (2000 minutes on the 1GB plan and 4000 minutes on the 2GB plan), so if you’re a really heavy Skype person and chat about 130 hours per month, the Three deal may be better than Vodafone’s.

The 3G modem they use is a Huawei E220, which looks like it’s the same modem used by Virgin and Three. There appears to be Linux support for it, and I can confirm that Mac supports works fine on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) thanks to an alternative driver.

So, if you’re interested, visit the Vodafone 5GB webpage. You can sign up through the Internet on the spot. However, you can also sign up over the phone, and if you do, you have a 30-day “cooling off” period where you can opt out of your contract if you’re not happy with the service. (Stupidly enough, you can’t get the 30-day cooling off period if you pop into a Vodafone store, because phone service has different conditions to face-to-face service. Ja, whatever man.) Hurry though: the deal expires on December 31, 2007. Get it as a late Christmas present for yourself, I guess!

¹ Telstra Mobility Broadband is a completely separate service from Bigpond Broadband, and Telstra and Bigpond are separate entities. I found this out the hard way, when I was on a 10-hour-per-month CDMA/EVDO plan with Telstra, and couldn’t upgrade to the 10-hour-per-month 3G plan with Bigpond, because Telstra and Bigpond are separate things. Ahuh. (I couldn’t upgrade to a 10h plan on Telstra, because Telstra doesn’t even offer hourly plans anymore.) Way to go for rewarding all your mobile Internet early adopters that braved EVDO, you frigtards.

This is a Public Service Announcement for Australians: if you’re looking for mobile broadband access for your laptop (and what geek isn’t?), Vodafone are doing a pretty spectacular deal at the moment for ‘net access via their 3G/HSDPA network.

For $39/month, you get 5GB of data; no time limits; no speed caps; and fallback from 3G to GPRS in regional areas where HSDPA isn’t available yet. It’s a fantastic deal for people who live in metropolitan areas and work on the road a lot.

The main catch is that it’s a 24-month contract, so is a somewhat long time to be locked in to a plan. However, I have a feeling that no other mobile Internet offering is going to be competitive with 5GB for $40/month within the next two years. (Hell, $39/month for decent mobile Internet access is competitive with even some fixed-line ADSL2 providers.) One other small catch is that you also can’t use multiple devices on the plan: it’s tied to the single SIM card that you purchase with the plan. So, all you cool kids with 3G/GPRS-capable mobile phones, you can’t include that device on part of the bundle (looks sadly at iPhone). Other than that, it’s really a pretty bloody good deal.

To compare this with other plans:

• Vodafone themselves offer a craptacular 100MB for $29/month, which is barely enough to just check email these days. (And that doesn’t include the modem, which is another $200). A mere 1GB of data is $59/month, or $99 per month with no contract!

• Telstra are even worse (this is my surprised face): $59 for 200MB. I’ll say that again: $59 per month for 200MB. 1GB is $89.

• Bigpond (who are different from Telstra¹) offer vaguely competitive plans if you’re OK with a 10-hour-per-month time limit: that goes for $35/month. (This translates to around 30 minutes per business day, which may be OK if you just hop online occasionally to check email.) The $35 plan is the only timed plan, though: other than that, it’s $55 for 200MB (puke), or $85 for 1GB.

• I can’t even find out whether Optus have mobile broadband plans available. Comments?

• Virgin Mobile Broadband used to be pretty spectacular at $10/month for 1GB, and is still somewhat OK at $80/month for the same 1GB if it’s bundled with a phone plan. Considering that Vodafone’s $39/month for 5GB, you can still pair their deal with a phone plan of your choice and have 5GB instead of 1GB, though.

• Three (or 3, or whatever) just launched the next best alternative with their new X-Series plans. Their Gold plan is $30/month for 1GB, and their Platinum plan is $40/month for 2GB. Interestingly, the X-Series plans give you a ton of free Skype minutes (2000 minutes on the 1GB plan and 4000 minutes on the 2GB plan), so if you’re a really heavy Skype person and chat about 130 hours per month, the Three deal may be better than Vodafone’s.

The 3G modem they use is a Huawei E220, which looks like it’s the same modem used by Virgin and Three. There appears to be Linux support for it, and I can confirm that Mac supports works fine on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) thanks to an alternative driver.

So, if you’re interested, visit the Vodafone 5GB webpage. You can sign up through the Internet on the spot. However, you can also sign up over the phone, and if you do, you have a 30-day “cooling off” period where you can opt out of your contract if you’re not happy with the service. (Stupidly enough, you can’t get the 30-day cooling off period if you pop into a Vodafone store, because phone service has different conditions to face-to-face service. Ja, whatever man.) Hurry though: the deal expires on December 31, 2007. Get it as a late Christmas present for yourself, I guess!

¹ Telstra Mobility Broadband is a completely separate service from Bigpond Broadband, and Telstra and Bigpond are separate entities. I found this out the hard way, when I was on a 10-hour-per-month CDMA/EVDO plan with Telstra, and couldn’t upgrade to the 10-hour-per-month 3G plan with Bigpond, because Telstra and Bigpond are separate things. Ahuh. (I couldn’t upgrade to a 10h plan on Telstra, because Telstra doesn’t even offer hourly plans anymore.) Way to go for rewarding all your mobile Internet early adopters that braved EVDO, you frigtards.

Haskell magician Don Stewart echoes my own opinion on lines of code in his Haskell Workshop demo on xmonad:

A couple of nice refactorings happened when we found data structures that fit better, and you dramatically drop down in the number of lines of code. So we use lines of code as a bit of a heuristic for working out when code sucks. If something gets really big, it probably needs to be rewritten.

I’m staring at a 60,000 line code base right now that I’m positive could be under 30,000 lines of code if it had a good rewri… erm, refactoring. Sometimes when you can’t figure out what’s going on in a function that’s a thousand lines long, the best solution is to rewrite the thing in a hundred lines instead. (And that time, I really did mean rewrite, not refactor.)

Update: Steve Yegge writes a good essay about code size, and believes that “the worst thing that can happen to a code base is size”. (If only he applied that principle to his blog posts as well…)

Haskell magician Don Stewart echoes my own opinion on lines of code in his Haskell Workshop demo on xmonad:

A couple of nice refactorings happened when we found data structures that fit better, and you dramatically drop down in the number of lines of code. So we use lines of code as a bit of a heuristic for working out when code sucks. If something gets really big, it probably needs to be rewritten.

I’m staring at a 60,000 line code base right now that I’m positive could be under 30,000 lines of code if it had a good rewri… erm, refactoring. Sometimes when you can’t figure out what’s going on in a function that’s a thousand lines long, the best solution is to rewrite the thing in a hundred lines instead. (And that time, I really did mean rewrite, not refactor.)

Update: Steve Yegge writes a good essay about code size, and believes that “the worst thing that can happen to a code base is size”. (If only he applied that principle to his blog posts as well…)

Reg Braithwaite has said very eloquently something I’ve been meaning to express for a long time:

When someone says something outrageous, like “f*ck compilers and their false sense of security”, it is not important whether I happen to think that programming languages with strong, expressive type systems are valuable (hint: I do). What is important is to look at this statement and ask yourself: Is there just one thing in there, one kernel of wisdom that I can extract and use to be a better programmer?

I wrote about geek culture and criticism earlier, but Braithwaite knocks it up a notch and hammers the point home in a single paragraph. To use an analogy, being a good geek is like being a good partner in a relationship… step one: listen. Step two: empathise. (Step three: profit!)

Reg Braithwaite has said very eloquently something I’ve been meaning to express for a long time:

When someone says something outrageous, like “f*ck compilers and their false sense of security”, it is not important whether I happen to think that programming languages with strong, expressive type systems are valuable (hint: I do). What is important is to look at this statement and ask yourself: Is there just one thing in there, one kernel of wisdom that I can extract and use to be a better programmer?

I wrote about geek culture and criticism earlier, but Braithwaite knocks it up a notch and hammers the point home in a single paragraph. To use an analogy, being a good geek is like being a good partner in a relationship… step one: listen. Step two: empathise. (Step three: profit!)

In the past two weeks, I’ve been wining and dining it up indeed…

• 30th of September: Dinner at Capitan Torres in the CBD, one of the finer Spanish restaurants in Sydney. Their paella and grilled octopus tapas are godly, and their chorizo is ohhhh mmmmm yumm.
• 1st of October: High Tea at the Gunner’s Barracks in Mosman, with stunning views of Sydney harbour, lovely tea, and a perfect 30° day.
• 5th of October: Lunch at Forty One at Chifley Plaza; $35 for melt-in-your-mouth salmon, and stunning views from 40 levels above Sydney (even from the bathroom!)
• 6th of October: Breakfast at Echo on the Marina in Roseville (near Echo Point park). An excellent place on the North side to go to for brekky; for the Eastern suburbs yuppies, I also love Trio at Bondi Beach.

All this after recovering from a ski trip where I had the best cabernet savignon and raspberry strudel in my entire life (thanks Matt)! Of course, I’d also interspersed fine restaurant samplings with visits to the best gelato place in the entire freaking world. So life ain’t too bad right now.

For the Sydneysiders, remember that October is Good Food Month! Make sure you check out the Let’s Do Lunch deals, where the best restaurants in town do $35 lunches. (Well, except for Tetsuya’s…) There’s also night noodle markets markets at Hyde Park… sigh, what a shame I’ll be off to Singapore this month and will miss out on the festivities. Oh well, I suppose heavenly dumplings, $2 chicken rice and chilli crab will have to do instead; boo hoo, O woe is me, etc etc.

In the past two weeks, I’ve been wining and dining it up indeed…

• 30th of September: Dinner at Capitan Torres in the CBD, one of the finer Spanish restaurants in Sydney. Their paella and grilled octopus tapas are godly, and their chorizo is ohhhh mmmmm yumm.
• 1st of October: High Tea at the Gunner’s Barracks in Mosman, with stunning views of Sydney harbour, lovely tea, and a perfect 30° day.
• 5th of October: Lunch at Forty One at Chifley Plaza; $35 for melt-in-your-mouth salmon, and stunning views from 40 levels above Sydney (even from the bathroom!)
• 6th of October: Breakfast at Echo on the Marina in Roseville (near Echo Point park). An excellent place on the North side to go to for brekky; for the Eastern suburbs yuppies, I also love Trio at Bondi Beach.

All this after recovering from a ski trip where I had the best cabernet savignon and raspberry strudel in my entire life (thanks Matt)! Of course, I’d also interspersed fine restaurant samplings with visits to the best gelato place in the entire freaking world. So life ain’t too bad right now.

For the Sydneysiders, remember that October is Good Food Month! Make sure you check out the Let’s Do Lunch deals, where the best restaurants in town do $35 lunches. (Well, except for Tetsuya’s…) There’s also night noodle markets markets at Hyde Park… sigh, what a shame I’ll be off to Singapore this month and will miss out on the festivities. Oh well, I suppose heavenly dumplings, $2 chicken rice and chilli crab will have to do instead; boo hoo, O woe is me, etc etc.

Like a lot of other folks, I’d switched over to Gmail my primary email account. Their Web interface is great, and Gmail’s spam filtering is possibly the best I’d ever seen. However, there was one rather small problem, where by “rather small problem” I mean “kinda huge problem”: I was losing emails. As in, I know the person had sent me emails, and I never received them. Yep, I checked the spam folder. The emails never showed up¹.

I was willing to forgive this once or twice, seeing as how complicated and fragile all these SMTP shenanigans is. (Seriously, SMTP has to contend with FTP for the Most Stupid Protocol Ever Award.) However, after Gmail lost emails three or four times and I received the emails successfully at my other, non-Gmail accounts, I couldn’t ignore the problem any longer. The last straw was when one of my friends forwarded me an email three times from another Gmail account and none of the mails came through.

I’ve since switched to Pobox.com and have been a happy chappy since. Pobox’s spam filtering isn’t quite as good as Gmail’s, but it’s good enough, and their once-per-day spam report where you can simply click on a false positive spam to whitelist and retrieve it is just brilliant. That feature alone is worth the $20/year. If they had an email forwarding address where I could send them the rest of my spams to improve their overall spam training, Pobox would be perfect. If you’re looking for a powerful, reliable email forwarding service, I can recommend Pobox without hesitation.

So, here’s a question: has anybody else out there lost emails with Gmail? Surely it must’ve happened to somebody besides me. (Oh, and if you read this, work for Google and would like to figure out what’s going on, drop me a mail: I have the Message-IDs of at least a couple of the emails that were lost. Maybe we can all work this out.)

¹ The first time I experienced any email lossage with Gmail was, very unfortunately, a business-related mail: one of our RapidWeaver customers had a Gmail address, and despite me sending two or three emails to him, he claimed never to have never received them. Of course, said customer thought that our customer support was rather lacking when he never received an email within a month, despite me sending one off within 14 hours of seeing the problem. A small drama ensued, threats were being made to post about our lack of customer care to the front page of Digg, etc etc. Thankfully everything was sorted out at the very last minute and unhappy people were made happy again, but geez, it’s a nice reminder of how things can go wrong very fast when communication channels break down.

Like a lot of other folks, I’d switched over to Gmail my primary email account. Their Web interface is great, and Gmail’s spam filtering is possibly the best I’d ever seen. However, there was one rather small problem, where by “rather small problem” I mean “kinda huge problem”: I was losing emails. As in, I know the person had sent me emails, and I never received them. Yep, I checked the spam folder. The emails never showed up¹.

I was willing to forgive this once or twice, seeing as how complicated and fragile all these SMTP shenanigans is. (Seriously, SMTP has to contend with FTP for the Most Stupid Protocol Ever Award.) However, after Gmail lost emails three or four times and I received the emails successfully at my other, non-Gmail accounts, I couldn’t ignore the problem any longer. The last straw was when one of my friends forwarded me an email three times from another Gmail account and none of the mails came through.

I’ve since switched to Pobox.com and have been a happy chappy since. Pobox’s spam filtering isn’t quite as good as Gmail’s, but it’s good enough, and their once-per-day spam report where you can simply click on a false positive spam to whitelist and retrieve it is just brilliant. That feature alone is worth the $20/year. If they had an email forwarding address where I could send them the rest of my spams to improve their overall spam training, Pobox would be perfect. If you’re looking for a powerful, reliable email forwarding service, I can recommend Pobox without hesitation.

So, here’s a question: has anybody else out there lost emails with Gmail? Surely it must’ve happened to somebody besides me. (Oh, and if you read this, work for Google and would like to figure out what’s going on, drop me a mail: I have the Message-IDs of at least a couple of the emails that were lost. Maybe we can all work this out.)

¹ The first time I experienced any email lossage with Gmail was, very unfortunately, a business-related mail: one of our RapidWeaver customers had a Gmail address, and despite me sending two or three emails to him, he claimed never to have never received them. Of course, said customer thought that our customer support was rather lacking when he never received an email within a month, despite me sending one off within 14 hours of seeing the problem. A small drama ensued, threats were being made to post about our lack of customer care to the front page of Digg, etc etc. Thankfully everything was sorted out at the very last minute and unhappy people were made happy again, but geez, it’s a nice reminder of how things can go wrong very fast when communication channels break down.

<img src=“http://images.apple.com/au/imac/images/gallery/imackeyboard_4_20070807.jpg"/ width=“100%">

<img src=“http://images.apple.com/au/imac/images/gallery/imackeyboard_4_20070807.jpg"/ width=“100%">

It appears that Andrew Lee has finished the Zerg Campaign in Starcraft. Amusement follows.

Overmind: Greetings underlings. I’m so cool I shit ice-cream. And I’ve got a new toy - this super important mega-death weapon thing that’s currently breeding in a Chrysalis. It’s a big big secret what’s inside but when she pops out, she’ll lay the smackdown on everything! I’m not telling anyone what’s inside the chrysalis so it’ll be a total surprise when she awakens. Also, since hot babe Kerrigan just died in Chapter 1, it can’t possibly be her. And if it is her (which it’s not), it’ll be such a cunning plot twist that you’ll wet yourself.

It’s like totally important that this Chrysalis thing is protected. So, amongst all my legions of creatures, I am going to choose… my most young and inexperienced Cerebrate to protect it.

All the other Cerebrates: Erm… boss… you sure about that?

Overmind: Of course I’m sure! I’m the Overmind! Okay… so little young cutie teacher’s pet newbie Cerebrate, there’s a few things you need to know before you begin your life as protector of the chrysalis… are you ready?

Newbie Cerebrate: Yes boss.

Overmind: Ok. This… is a drone.

All the other Cerebrates: Oh for fuck’s sake.

Overmind: And when you have enough minerals, you can build a Pwning Spool.

Newbie Cerebrate: Minerals… Pwning Spool… Got it.

Cerebrate Daggoth: Things sure are dull now that Overmind is cuddling Newbie over there. Hey Zasz, can I ask you something?

Cerebrate Zasz: Sure Daggoth.

Daggoth: So, we’re like masters of evolution right?

Zasz: Yeah.

Daggoth: So we can evolve from little larvae things to become anything at all right?

Zasz: Yeah.

Daggoth: So, we could look like… I dunno… Jessica Alba… or the Asian chick from Battlestar Gallactica… but instead we look like pulsating grey pieces of shit.

Zasz: Sucks dunnit. Anyway, that’s why Overmind nabbed Kerrigan. He’s been totally getting into Japanese tentantacle porn…

Daggoth: …

Overmind: And then you right click and build a Hydralisk Den. That let’s you build Hydralisks. That’s why it’s called a Hydralisk Den.

Newbie: Hey boss. I’m grateful that you’re taking the time to explain all this to me. But it’s been like 15 levels now and I think I’m ready to do a bit more. How about we push the storyline a bit.

Overmind: Ok. Go kill Terrans.

Newbie: (Kills Terrans)

Overmind: Go kill Protoss.

Newbie: (Kills Protoss)

Overmind: Go kill renegade Zerg.

Newbie: (Kills renegade Zerg) Script writers took a break on this chapter huh?

Overmind: yeah. Go kill more stuff till the Chrysalis thing hatches.

Newbie: Okay.

Raynor: Hey, I’ve been having these wacky dreams… as if Kerrigan were calling out to me. But I know that’s impossible because she died in Chapter 1.

Zerg Kerrigan: Hi everyone! I’m back. It was me in the Chrysalis. How cool and unexpected was that!

Everyone with IQ over 7: Shit me a brick! We all just wet ourselves!

Raynor: Oh my God. Sarah! What have they done to you?

Zerg Kerrigan: I’m a Zerg now. (wins Most Obvious Statement award)

Raynor: Well, I’ve still got a hard-on for you. So…are we going to bonk or are you going to kill me?

Zerg Kerrigan: Well, I want to kill you. But some strange lingering emotion inside me compels me to let you go. Some emotion stronger than any Zerg power over me. I… I don’t know what it could be. Leave Jimmy. Leave now.. before it’s too late. Must… control… (but how about we get together in the expansion set)

Raynor: Ok. Bye.

Zeratul: I’m an invisible Dark Templar Protoss. No one can see me and I’ve got this cool Jedi Lightsabre! I’m hunting Cerebrates… Charrge! (kills Zasz)

Zasz: Arrrggh (dies)

Overmind: Shame about Zasz. But when Zertaul shoved his light sabre up Zasz’s ass, I connected with Zertaul’s mind and now I know where the Protoss Homeworld is! Suck that Zeratul.

Zertaul: Bugger. (runs away)

Overmind: Cool, let’s go invade the Protoss Homeworld. The most important thing there is the Khaldarin Crystals, the source of all power!!! Since this is the most important thing ever after protecting the Chrysalis, I’m going to pick the Newbie Cerebrate again to take control of all my forces. Newbie, go to the Protoss Homeworld, steal the crystals and then kill all the Protoss there.

Newbie: Hey big boss, can I ask you a few questions?

Overmind: Of course my little cupcake:

Newbie: Well firstly, in Chapter 1, Mensk and Kerrigan turned on that one Psi-emitter rubics cube and “Zerg from across the galaxy” were lured to it. So how is it that the Protoss Homeworld, filled with 10 billion Psychic Protoss, is completely invisible to us?

Overmind: Err…

Newbie: And then there’s this thing about the Khaldarin Crystals. We only just found out about the Protoss Homeworld five minutes ago when Zeratul shoved his sabre up Zasz’s ass and you looked into his mind…so how is it that we know all about the Crystals and exactly where they are, so much so that we’ve set up a big friggin’ Neon Lit beacon over the beacon saying “BRING DRONE HERE”. But the Protoss, who have lived on the planet since forever AND who have a special upgrade called “Khaldarin Amulet”, don’t have a clue about the Crystals?

Overmind: Shut the fuck up. Now, go steal the crystals. Just look for the beacon.

Newbie: Yes boss. (steals the Crystals)

Overmind: Now do the Crystal Thing… and I can plant my fat ass down on the Protoss Homeworld. YEAH!