What annoys me currently is that economists are running around claiming two things:

1. This time, things are different.

2. It's not like the crash in 1929 where we lost everything.

Both of these statements are annoying because the crash didn't end til 1933, which was four years after it started. So how we can tell whether or not it will be like that when we still have at least 3.5 years to go? And it always makes me frightened whenever someone says, "This time it's different."

"I know that Jack died when he jumped off this building without a parachute, but you'll be OK because this time it's different". It's such bullshit. It's the same as every other time we have done this. The only different thing is that we are throwing good taxpayer money after bad.

I'm giving the current 'boost' a maximum of two weeks before the negative results return. There is no point to keeping a bubble inflated.

Journalists annoy me because they don't understand statistics and graphs, and don't know it, and don't realise neither does the lay person. In this morning's The Australian is a graph of the All Ords. That's fine, what's not fine is it is in log scale, so people get a skewed perception of the graph. Lay people don't understand log, give it to them in linear which they can understand better. Linear shows you the truth, there is no cover up bullshit. Don't believe me? Compare the log scale of the DOW with the linear of the same DOW graph. The linear shows you the madness started in 1995, which the log conveniently 'hides'.

As I write this, the ASX is already on the downwards trend.

Apparently, there was a talking doll version of Elmo that people thought it said,

"Uh-oh! Who wants to die?"

http://www.snopes.com/business/alliance/dolltalk.asp

So Wittlenix is right: Elmo is evil!.

I have this terrible habit of speaking too soon. Over the weekend I was worried that there would be a small loss on Monday, followed by a larger loss on Wall Street to be replicated here, on Tuesday (today). Today I was admitting what I was working on wasn't working when it finally did! Apparently, for the string to print something out onto the screen, it has to have something to print out (who woulda thunk it?!).

I have to admit I know very little about I2C. Is this something I should have known about?

I blogged before about Infinity Waters, but now there is another development in West lakes: West Lakes Collection. A 2 bedroom apartment will retail from A$600,000.

Are things getting sillier and sillier?! To get 5% return from your rent, you will need to ask for A$600 per week. That is more than quite a few people's income.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial planner and have no formal qualifications and thus do not wish to advise or assist anyone in making their financial plans. This is just my take on the FHSA as to how it benefits me. It is quite likely that it is very different for everyone else. AWOOGA!

I saw an advertisement recently in the Advertiser for the CBA's First Home Saver Account.

The quick background for those who aren't aware, the current Federal Labor government initiated these first home saver accounts to help people purchase their first home.

I have been looking into them to find out if they are worthwhile to me. I compared the FHSA from CBA to the interest rate of a term deposit. The assumption I made is that the interest rates would both remain the same over the next four years. The reason I did that is because the current rate offering for CBA's FHSA is less than what you could get currently for a term deposit with that quantity of money and I assumed that it would likely remain that way.

Current interest rate for CBA's FHSA: 6.5%.
Current interest rate for term deposit: 8.1% for one year, at which point extra $5G is added and then rolled over. Basically a series of term deposits.

Assuming that I place in $5G every year on the year mark, including right at the very start, at the end of four years, the FHSA would be up by close to $1G, due pretty much to the tax breaks. That's about 3.3% difference. Which is pretty much a muchness.

I need to consider then whether or not I want to lock my money away for four years, and if I find that perfect little place before time's up, too bad. Also, what happens if my circumstances change and I decide I don't want to purchase a house after those four years? I can leave my FHSA running until I am 65 at which point they will force me to close it, to either purchase a house or into super. Note to self: don't open one of these accounts when 62. Apparently those over the age of 62 don't need help saving up for a deposit for their first house. Agist bastards.

There is also the $75G cap limit. Which is annoying if you can save up that far. Pretend I am a young neurologist, and can manage to save up $75G in two years time, but I want to buy a bigger house than average, and so need a bigger deposit. I am unable to contribute more than $75G. Or, what happens long term if you leave the FHSA running indefinately? Once it has reached $75G you may no longer contribute to it. That's a bit annoying. Note, that interest added to the amount would substantially bring it over that limit. Under my hypothetical situation, that would take about ten years. After 15 years, there would be around about $100,000 in the account.

Compare that to the term deposit situation, with an assumed 30% consistent tax rate. After ten years, it would have just under a grand less than the FHSA, and because you can still contribute to it, at the 15 year mark, it would have $130G. That is a substantial difference ($30G).

One more issue: To purchase a house with the money from the FHSA, I need to live in said house that I buy; I cannot rent it out. That means however, that I cannot stay at my parents' home for free and rent out my house to help pay off the mortgage. Which is what I would need to do at the moment to even vaguely afford a house.

For me, the CBA FHSA just doesn't cut the mustard. I would rather pay the full tax, retain the flexibility/liquidity of cash and earn extra on my cash, and rent out my chosen house to pay it off. That doesn't mean it is right for you or anyone else. An FHSA at term deposit interest rates doesn't change my mind because I still cannot contribute after $75G balance point, after year 9, I still cannot pay off my mortgage by renting out the house while living with my parents, and I still have lost flexibility and liquidity that should come with cash. The ability to contribute past the $75G ramps up the earnings of the term deposit situation.

However, having thought about it for a few hours, the real power behind the FHSA is not the $850 the federal government contributes, but the tax reduction. So to get real benefit out of the FHSA, you need a good sized deposit to produce decent interest, which is taxed less. So basically, the FHSA is only really useful for those that don't need it.

Sometimes I listen, really listen, to song lyrics and am bewildered by the lyrics. Today's example is The English Language Let me Down by Space.

Some wish we were never born
Just because their curtains are all drawn on time

Right. Time is 7.30pm on the dot, our curtains are drawn, therefore that lot must be evil and should never have been born.

wtf?!!?

( Music Meme )

In UML notation, how do you handle a typedef of a pointer to a function?

I am leaning toward a variable rather than a method as it is treated as a variable.

Thus, it is

# (*functionName)(int* param1, int* param2) in the variable slot in the class diagram for that object?

So my parents have signed the documents for the offer and are in the cooling off period. Shocking, I know. The take-over date is late October, so that is when the family starts changing the house to suit us. Is that about the time I should sign a contract to be able to move into my own little place at the same time as they move into theirs?

General Building Craziness

Out and about Sunday afternoon, I spotted a new development at West Lakes: Infinity Waters. I thought it might be good to rent a place there, so I took a quick squiz at the plans and pricing.

Before going any further, how much do you think a 2 bedroom, or 2.5 bedroom flat at West Lakes would go for? Did you guess in the range between 645,000 and 1.6 million? Don't believe me about the prices at Infinity Waters, West Lakes?

Just stop and think about this: if you purchase a 2.5 bedroom flat for 1.6 million, and you want at least 5% return on your money from rent, you would be asking more than 1,500 per week. I don't know anyone whose income even comes close, let alone what they can spend on rent. Quite frankly, you can get stuff cheaper in the city and Glenelg.

I will admit that the view on the top floors may be quite nice, as seen by a clip on uTube about Infinity Waters, but still, it isn't worth 1.6 mil.

I suppose the last fool hasn't been born yet.

By Golly that Rissington Podcast has something miraculous in it. Each time I try to listen to it at night, it doesn't take 15 minutes and I have dropped off to sleep! I think they have found a cure for insomnia.

They go on and on about absolutely nothing. In the latest podcast they talk about remaining humourous and light to prevent themselves going up their own backsides. Too late!

My students are starting on their assignments and starting to ask why this or that doesn't work or why they are getting that result, and I am at a loss with just Notepad and MIE.

So I am making a power stick: a USB mass storage device with Firefox Portable, extended with Adblocker Plus, Operator, Tails, Web Developer Toolbar, Colour Contrast Analyse, DOM Inspector and Firebug, Boxer Software Text Editor, extended with the WDG Help file for HTML and the file for CSS, and Opera USB, and Portable GIMP.

Anyway, I was searching for Standalone IE6 that could work on my USB device. The browser archive at evolt.org has something, and it loads, but I cannot load any content into it. So that sucked.

But I came across the Friendly Bit blog, and the Open letter to the IE team. I became curious about the blog and went to the home page to find more recent articles, and read the article about Why adding variables to CSS is a good thing.

I absolutely concur with CSS Variables and good on WebKit and Apple for going ahead with it.

Bert Bos' argument, Why “variables” in CSS are harmful, reminds me of the Danish adage: a murky saying is a murky thought. It looks like Bert Bos had quite a few murky thoughts!

His main argument seems to be that a badly named constant will make the CSS more unclear. True. That is the same for programming.
However, also in programming, an all-in-uppercase well-named constant can confer a lot of meaning more quickly and is more easy to redefine for the entire system, crossing as many stylesheets as needed (remember my dodgy 21 stylesheets?)

His argument seems to be that constants would make CSS harder to learn for the beginner. Just to note, infinity base is already in the specs. Constants are a heck of a lot more easier than infinity base.

To me, Bert Bos' argument could be applied to XML: it would be too tricky for newcomers to try to read source code for XML that contains multiple and customised XML namespaces and thus we shouldn't have it, and we should all stick with HTML. That argument is clearly ridiculous applied to XML, and it should be just as ridiculous to apply to a style sheet language.

I still think the argument is to have a second style sheet language. Bert Bos wants CSS to remain easy for newcomers, and for them not to get confused by stylesheets written by designers. Srsly dude, with or without constants, designer created stylesheets are a mystery to new learners. And I try to help teach it.

Developers and Designers could have their own elements and styles, like XML, a second style sheet language that had constants, mathematical expressions, extendibility for element selectors and greater layout control.

Designers are certainly a large part of the web and are worth looking after, and worth giving their desired style capabilities.

Really, there are two desires and two different aims. Perhaps we should split these into two?

OMG.

It looks like Dad is going to put an offer in for a house. OMG. He is going to offer a lot less than what he thinks they want, so we may not end up getting the house, but it is a very positive step!!!

I don't think I will understand the mysterious workings of the iTunes together with the last.fm scrobble service. Last night, I played a lot of music; this morning I downloaded and installed an iPod Touch upgrade; now all that is scrobbled from last night is just one song. How does that work? Why didn't the rest get scrobbled, why did that one? It makes no sense!!!

I have a decision I can make:

I can:
a. Rent somewhere else and move out.
b. Scrimp and save for a deposit, purchase a property, rent it out, and pay it off that way.

'A' may mean not owning property, but getting my own place. 'B' may mean owning property, but remaining at home.

Hmmmmm.

I'm beginning to think that the worst programmers out there are those that think they are smart. So smart they don't document why they do what they do.

So smart they know operator precedence and thus put all sorts of strange bit-twiddling all on the same line without parenthesis because gosh golly they are so smart and therefore they don't need to document it.

And of course, why they have picked 63. Is this special for its bit order or due to the size of one of the arrays?

Adelaide is a city of one million people, and yet, when our local roads come to a STANDSTILL, there is no source of information why and what to do about it. Not on the local radio and not on the Intertubes. This frustrates me. Yet, we get to hear all about Sydney's traffic. Arregh!

OK, I started in on the program on what seemed a fairly reasonable end, and have worked out what the header file meant and the implementation of that header file meant, and documented it.

Now I get to a header file that by naming convention would appear to extend the first. What it seems to do is cover the bits referred to in the first but never fully developed. However, the implementation of it is quite scary:

int kyky = 1;
int kyky1 = 0;

Confusing much?

Yes, now I am procrastinating. I admit it.

Anyway, bugger Bernard Salt, and those with think that the use of the abbreviation, kipper applies only to those that stay at home.

What the blinking heck does this do?

planame is a pointer to a string, btw.

*planame=((*planame-'0')<<6) +
((*(planame+1)-'0')<<3)+
((*(planame+2)-'0'));

Any ideas?

Beginnings of an idea (really dodgy short-hand, take that into account):
the first character in the string = ((planame[0] - 48) x 2 ^ 6) + ((planame[1] -48) x 2^3) + (planame[2] - 48)

Does this mean, the first character in the string is equal to (the first character minus 48) times 2 to the power of 6 plus (the second character in the string minus 48) times 2 to the power of 3 plus (the third character in the string minus 48).

Why the heck would you do this?

I think I came across a cocktail recipe for French 75 when searching for information on C/C++ and makefiles. I think there is a wikibook for C for programmers that I was looking at and then got a bit distracted and checked out what other wiki books there were.

I tried that cocktail, actually, and it is really good. It reminds me of a alcoholic and bubbly home made lemonade. I'm sure it would be sensational with some ice, in the summer.