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Colm O'Connor commented about The Cultural Benefit of Travel, On Friday February 6th, 2009 12:30:00 PM
Good post.
I still think, however, that it is mistaken to assume that we can entirely divorce ourselves from these influences by travel, no matter how long.
I'm thinking particularly of the influences burned into us during our formative years in childhood. They are the hardest to let go of, since they literally shape our minds.
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Colm O'Connor commented about Does a Blog Need Comments, On Sunday December 28th, 2008 02:48:00 PM
I would personally switch comments off. I'm building a website right now with a blog, and it has comments disabled.
Blog comments encourage anonymous participation in a conversation. This tends to amplify the noise and make people behave badly. (see http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2004/04/02/penny_arcades_greater_internet_fuckwad_theory/ )
However, I think trackbacks are a fine thing. They encourage thoughtful responses from people with their own blogs. They won't have the veil of anonymity and will have a reputation to worry about so their responses will be appropriate and probably much better (although less numerous).
As to the 'philosophical' notion of 'is a blog a blog without comments?'... well, i don't think the precise definition of blog really matters that much.
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Colm O'Connor commented about ComingAnarchy.com, On Thursday December 25th, 2008 04:29:00 PM
I like their blog. I found them through John Robb ( http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/ ), who is also very insightful.
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Colm O'Connor commented about Yahoo Messenger Travel Security Risk, On Tuesday December 23rd, 2008 06:04:00 PM
There are a number of things other than not checking the password box you can do to protect against this.
* Use firefox with the 'master password' checkbox ticked. this means that your password is saved, but encrypted and other users will need the master password to get in. If they happen to get to your computer while it's on, they might be able to access your gmail account but not change its password.
* Use an encrypted disk with software like TrueCrypt, if you're really paranoid. If your computer is off, no data on the drive should be recoverable without the password.
Additionally, if you want somewhere handy to keep your web passwords, foxmarks does a very nice service where they sync your bookmarks and passwords (encrypted of course) so that if you lose your laptop you can recover them later.
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Colm O'Connor commented about Mumbai Massacre, On Tuesday December 2nd, 2008 07:35:00 AM
There is very little need to "protect" yourself from Mumbai style massacres. They're vanishingly rare, they're just extremely well publicized to billions of people, giving the impression of being a real and imminent danger to billions of people.
While traveling, I'd be far more concerned with the mundane risks - road accidents being my no. 1 concern, malaria probably no. 2.
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Colm O'Connor commented about Google.com Site Search Not Achieving Goal, On Wednesday October 22nd, 2008 04:18:00 AM
Have you tried creating a sitemap? I have tried looking for one on your site, but can't find one. Typically, they're referenced from robots.txt.
I would typically refrain from creating your own search engine. They are *very* difficult to do well, and even if you invest hundreds of man hours and many thousands of dollars you're unlikely to do it as well as a google search of your website.
Even off the shelf solutions are probably not as good as google will be (though they will usually be better than anything you create yourself).
Google's indexing algorithm is usually very good, but it works much better if you provide it with hints. This can be done by creating a denser internal link structure (e.g. bringing together links to related pages, creating mini-landing pages) and creating a sitemap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_map).
In general, the more links away from the main page something is the less likely is to index it. If you rearranged your main page so that most things were available from the main page in 2 or 3 clicks I bet all of your site would be indexed again.
This is partly why I advised you to move your information to mediawiki. I believe that would make it easier to add context and create a taxonomy that would enable humans and search engine spiders alike dig deeper into your content and find useful info. However, just re-arranging your link structure will probably do just as well.
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Colm O'Connor commented about Finding Hyperinflation Countries, On Friday October 17th, 2008 05:42:00 AM
Zim still has this problem. It's at something like 220 million percent, possibly much higher.
I have a friend from there who tells me what life is like there sometimes. He said that it is so high that if you buy a beer at the beginning of a round of golf, it will be a fair bit cheaper than if you buy it at the end.
Most real trade is done there in dollars. My friend's parents are doctors and they won't accept local currency.
Hyperinflation probably makes it a good place to visit if it's in double figures. When it reaches six figures I'm not so sure it will help any more.
You should definitely spend your money quickly if you do go, as every second its value depreciates.
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Colm O'Connor commented about Iraq War Was Not a Mistake, On Friday October 17th, 2008 05:33:00 AM
I would personally have qualified the war as a mistake purely by quantitative measures of the conditions of the country prior to and after the invasion.
If the people are more unsafe afterwards - and they were (and still are I believe), then it can be judged a failure. If running water and electricity fail then
Bringing democracy to the world is a noble cause, but that wasn't the motivation for the war (it was more about taking saddam out). Democracy is great, but safety, security and clean running water are preferable.
I noticed a huge number of the richer Iraqis queuing up to be let into dubai - an often vicious dictatorship because more than democracy they wanted running water and safety for their children.
I don't believe it is necessarily a mistake or in bad form to criticize the troops. I believe that it might be true that immunizing them from criticism can do more damage than not, in fact.
It's a peculiarly American trait to claim that "criticizing soldiers is wrong". Few other countries have this. I believe that it's a cultural taboo created in order to help justify overt military aggression.
it follows quite closely a taboo or moral fashion as described by this guy - http://paulgraham.com/say.html
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Colm O'Connor commented about Thailand Best Value for Christmas 2008, On Friday October 17th, 2008 05:16:00 AM
Thanks for this. Good to know. I'm planning on maybe cutting loose in a month or so and coming.
The only thing that worried me is that the heightened tensions between Cambodia and Thailand might make visa runs more difficult.
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Colm O'Connor commented about The New Global Anger, On Friday October 17th, 2008 05:11:00 AM
>The more advanced just ignore the
>people in their daiy lives unless
>they must interact.
is that part haughtiness? when i visited india i noticed my friends acting in a different way around locals. they'd start acting in a manner more like a king addressing his serfs. it bugged the hell out of me.
i haven't traveled much in developing countries, so i can't tell if this is the norm when westerners go abroad.
there's a coldness people have in large cities too. i notice this especially living in london. they're afraid to interact.
n.b. i saw your post about calling the iraq war a mistake - i can bet that made an *awful* lot of people angry. american politics seems to create far more schisms much more nowadays.
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Colm O'Connor commented about Broadband Speed Test, On Friday October 17th, 2008 05:00:00 AM
Skype doesn't use much bandwidth anyway - sub dial up levels typically. It will be lag and intermittent connection breaks that kill your conversation. Bandwidth will correlate with that, but won't necessarily dictate it.
I guess by checking out the bandwidth and seeing that there's enough for you and everybody else in the hotel who could potentially use the connection you can call knowing that your conversation won't die when somebody else logs on.
Some newer routers have special rules that give priority quality of service to SIP (the standard voice protocol) so it might be worth trying out some SIP software as well as skype. When I go traveling I plan to take both.
Also, Skype has a tendency to do all sorts of funny wrangling to disguise its traffic - that usually serves to make it work in almost all cases, but often at the expense of call quality/reliability.
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Colm O'Connor commented about The New Global Anger, On Friday October 17th, 2008 03:06:00 AM
Are you sure this isn't just a feature of the Internet?
I have noticed that the same people who are angry and argumentative online behind the veil of anonymity or pseudo-anonymity become meek when the veil is lifted.
There is also something about sitting behind a computer that depersonalizes interactions. It's much easier to get angry at a computer than a person.
It seems to be most common when misinterpretation is rife - this is something I can see happening especially on your blog, since you talk in very general terms about many topics (such as this one). The people who read it, especially reading it without context or body language can completely misinterpret it and then disagree violently with that misinterpretation.
And, far from looking for a reason to be angry, I believe every generation has reasons to be angry. But that is a separate issue.
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Colm O'Connor commented about Broadband Speed Test, On Friday October 17th, 2008 03:00:00 AM
If you are testing your broadband speed with the intention of using Skype, it's better to use the Skype call testing service instead.
Add the contact 'echo123' to your contacts, and call it when you log on. It will say something to you, ask you to say something back and then repeat back to you what you said.
This has the advantage of being an end to end test - checking that bandwidth is sufficient and the connection isn't too laggy, but also that your headphones/mic are both hooked up and working properly.
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Colm O'Connor commented about Connecting to Internet in Seoul Korea, On Monday September 22nd, 2008 06:27:00 AM
They all used to be open in Europe and the USA too. It has nothing to do with people trusting one another more or less, manufacturers just started shipping routers with encryption turned on by default.
I'm surprised they haven't in SK, as technologically they tend to be 1-2 years ahead of Europe and the US. It might just be a lack of regulatory pressure (politicians in the west tend to regard use of open wifi as a crime).
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