University: Time Well Spent

Here's a flip animation I did in the margins of some lecture notes back in my uni days around a decade ago. I can't remember what subject it was, and I can't be bothered finding the notes, but I think it was introductory telecommunications or something equally compelling.

I'd been meaning to make this into an animated gif to preserve it for future generations, and finally got around to it tonight, when I should be working on an essay about cybercrime.

Well, that's enough procrastination...

Pirate Party Australia - National Congress Election Results

OK, this isn't a normal blog post.

It's the output from a quick and dirty app I wrote, which parses the election result data from the recent Pirate Party Australia National Congress Election. There wasn't a key (that I could be bothered figuring out) to understand the verbose, 2d output from the official results, so I've made my own, extremely verbose, 1d output. It's long, so if you're on the homepage of this site, don't click "read  more" unless you really want to. (that ought to drive traffic).

Anyway, the main thing I noticed was that there are some completely missing pieces of votes for motions (though not candidates). I hope next year there'll be an easier to follow audit trail, as that kind of "small discrepancy", while being understandable for a small (but growing) organisation like Pirate Party Australia, would be totally unacceptable to be used in governmental elections.

The other thing that I noticed, which is likely either a usability issue or people getting bored of such a long form, is the large number of people who filled out the motions but then didn't bother to vote for anyone.

I think the election system has been quite a success, and if it can be improved by having voter-verification support, an audit system that can trace down discrepancies without compromising the secrecy of the ballot, and be handed off to an impartial administrator, then we'll have something to use as a positive example when the inevitable debate around electronic voting comes to Australia.

Finally, a disclaimer: Quick and dirty, as mentioned above, means I have not had anyone verify my program. Ask me for the (begging for refactoring) source code if you're interested, or prove the data wrong with your own program if you'd like. I'm fine with being told if my output is wrong. To see the kind of sceptical nature I have, read about my home-conducted double-blind wine-tasting experiment, in which I identified about 20 procedural issues.

And now, the deluge:

National Security Inquiry: Urgent Request for Action

This is the email I have sent to my MP. Please find your own here on the Australian Parliament House website and feel free to take any portion of my email for the purpose of expediting a letter to your MP.

Gillard Government Caught Blatantly Violating own Law

If this article about the National Security Inquiry is anything to go by, the government has been caught breaking their own law, instituted by them to counteract abuses of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 1982, as perpetrated by the earlier Howard government.

Utopia

I've read Utopia.

Have you?

People throw that term around a lot. It's meant to describe an idyllic nation of happy, happy people.

Actually, here's what the book describes:
- A place where petty criminals are made into slaves, for life.
- A place where, in order to take a holiday from your town, you need to get permission to abscond from your career-chip-style job.
- A place where only those who don't cause any problems and are happy to live out a life of servitude to the status quo can survive.

Just seems like something to think about for those who think that there is an easy solution to creating the ideal situation on earth for everyone.

Sometimes, literature just doesn't live up to reality.