The latest version of Firefox has been released. Click ‘check for updates’ in the Help menu or head here to grab the latest copy.

New features include location awareness and support for HTML5 video (this is a ‘first fax machine’ situation at the moment but will hopefully have sites using it in more than a demonstration capacity soon (plz be YouTube )).

Check out the Ars Techinca feature review for more details.

I haven’t been able to check out the speed upgrades as my Facebook account is under maintenance at the moment but the most visible change so far is the ‘new tab’ +icon, and of course the fact that my browser now knows where I live. Ooh, and there’s a ’start private browsing’ button in the Tools menu but I suspect if I click that I will lose this post.

Once you’ve upgraded have a look at these HTML5 toys to play with.

I am continuing my quest to learn how to play Go. Found a blog that promises to be a good read, ‘Lose 100 Games‘. It’s named after a Go saying to the effect of ‘you should lose your first hundred games of Go quickly’. We’ll I’m on my way! I played my first 19×19 game on IGS today. Got completely flogged. I did pull a neat trick to make use of the Ko rule around move 218. Well I thought it was neat anyway, sacrificed one of my little soldiers to pull it off though. My opponent, bengotatu3, was 14 kyu so waay better than me, and it showed

Check out the game after the break.
Read the rest of this entry »

Go is an ancient strategic board game. Two opposing sides take turns placing stones on a grided board. The objective is to secure off parts of the board and hold that as your territory. Opposing stones can be captured if all their ‘liberties’ are removed (surrounded by your stones). A captured stone counts against you when the scores are tallied up at the end of the game.

While the rules (even the advanced ones) are pretty simple this is a surprisingly difficult game to play (at least, play well).

A great beginners tutorial is The Interactive Way to Go. This will run you through the basic rules, then some of the basic ideas and strategies to get you started. It also has a few demonstration games which, once I got up to them, understood most of what was going on (at least in hindsight ) and found enjoyable.

Once you’ve gone through the tutorial you may want to play a game or two. I found ‘go’ an incredibly annoying Google search term so I’ll include what I’ve come across so far. There is a Facebook application that lets you play Go against other players or the computer. If you would like to challenge me (n00b) to a game you can look me up here.

If you’re running Linux you can grab a nice free Go game called qGo, make sure to also install GNU Go so you have a computer to play against. I haven’t actually found a Windows/Mac client yet but I’m sure they’ll exist, let me know if you find one you like.

UPDATE (21/06): I have discovered the Internet Go Server! PANDANET IGS is one of the most popular places to play Go on the net. Check out the Getting Started page to find out how to get a login and client to connect. You can watch games (good to see how the pro’s do it) or open yourself up for a challenge and see how you fare. You can also challenge other people but at first I would suggest waiting for someone who knows what’s going on to pick you, then you won’t be challenging someone way above your grade by accident who won’t enjoy playing against you.

I have used the suggested Windows client, glGo, to connect to the Go server as well as the qGo on Linux mentioned above. They are similar in layout and features. There is also a free iPhone application, Tetsuki, which can connect to these servers. I have not been able to find a java based version that can connect to the internet servers for my J2ME phone yet.

Are you a groom, best man or humble groomsman? Perhaps checking out GroomGrove.com will help clear up any questions you always wanted to know but were too afraid to ask.

As the name suggests, this site focuses on the male members of the bridal party. The site is split up into sections based on who you are (the groom, best man etc.). Everything is covered from organising bachelor parties and what your tuxedo should include to how to treat the jitters (from both a grooms and best-man’s perspective). The duties of the various members of the bridal party are outlined, along with what you are traditionally expected to pay for (best man, groomsman). There are also speech writing tips and presentation advice.

Also covered, albeit not really ’solved’, is the subject of the bride changing her name. This has come up in conversation before and was never really resolved. Perhaps its merely a subjective decision and there is no ‘right’ solution.

All told, I think this site is a great resource if you find yourself involved in the business end of a wedding, be it a close friends or your own.

Score:

(4 / 5 Plebs)

Last December I wrote an article about microloans and that I’d recently invested some money into the concept. The final loan has matured now from this first round of lending so I thought it would be a good time to write an update on my experience so far.

As a brief recap, the investments are usually broken into $US25 parcels. I invested two of these parcels into two seperate loans (in the event that one defaults you haven’t lost everything). I decided to give Jose and Maria a loan. There’s not really an awful lot you can do to vet the applicants yourself, you are relying on the company issuing the loan to be doing a good job in selecting people who are going to use the loan to make their life better and then repay it so you can loan again.

In my case, one of the loans (Maria) defaulted. If you recall I was more confident in Maria’s loan as girls are statistically more likely to repay loans than guys and etc. etc. Apparently the loaning company, FSMA, suffered corruption ‘at a high level’ and of the $25 invested only $2.09 was ever repaid. This happened fairly early on and was very disappointing to me. It has certainly prevented me from putting any additional funds into my Kiva account, at least until I have a few more successful loans under my belt.

The loan to Jose was to be repaid all at once, I assume once the banana crop was in. This was repaid this morning and I was sent an email notifying me to that effect. I am quite pleased with this outcome and hope that Jose was able to use the loan to get his bumper harvest.

The repayment of this loan leaves me with a $25 parcel to reinvest. I am currently favouring a loan with the same loan company that Jose was with, Microfinanzas PRISMA. These are all loans going out to people in Peru. My leaning is towards funding things like food production or something that’s essential but I’m open to arguments to fund other industries.

I would like some help in picking the next person to fund. You can see the list of loans in the fund raising state with the PRISMA company here. Why not have a look through the people and let me know if anyone takes your fancy?

Boing Boing pointed me to the Bureau of Commuication, a neat website with 50’s looking forms that you can fill in the blanks to communicate anything from an invite or airing of grievance to, my favourite, a declaration of romantic intent.

It’s always a good idea to at least be aware of the ‘right way’ to do something, even if you’re just in it for fun at the moment. I know a good percentage of Plebs readers are squash players so I thought I would share a resource that has a lot of squash videos covering pretty much everything. The expertvillage collection on YouTube have a huge collection of squash tips such as:

• The ready position
• Forehand and Backhand swings
• Cross court return of serve

I particularly like this series as they are easy to understand and he takes the time to explain why you’re supposed to play like this (for example in the cross court video he explains you need this in your repertoire so you can ‘keep your opponent honest’, if you don’t quite know what that means you should find the videos on returning the serve down the wall)

Image is Creative Commons, courtesy of A3sthetix

I was in the biology library at UWA. Out the corner of my eye I saw what looked like the side of a vending machine in the middle of the study area. This being unexpected I decided to investigate.

Behold, the cone of silence:

The CellZone is a device being trialled by the uni to allow people to take mobile calls in the library without disturbing others. I like this idea as there are times when I receive phone calls I don’t really want to miss. I usually end up rapidly hibernating lappy, answering the phone in a hushed voice and scurrying out of the library as quickly as possible to start the real conversation.

I know others just answer the phone in situ and pretend to be Americans.

Tribune of the Plebs tested the cone of silence. A call was placed, talking at a normal volume. An outside observer heard nothing of the exchange though later remarked that a ventillation fan activated for him once when he was using it and the hum from the fan was annoying while you were talking in the booth. The sliding door is not as quiet as I would have expected for a device designed for silence, it will make loud clunks when it hits the end of its rail.

Mobile reception was not noticeably diminished inside the booth.

On the whole, this seems to achieve its purpose. I hope the uni considers installing them in the rest of the libraries, particularly on non-ground floor study areas.

Now, back to lab reports…

I mentioned the Transient States exhibit earlier this month, the other day I got around to seeing it for myself. I must admit I was initially disappointed. I found the initial photos I looked at were fairly heavily edited in post-production. My expectations of a gallery exhibit were little to no noticeable editing in post.

Blowing a photo up to over a metre does have some interesting effects. For one thing, they tend to look fantastic even if they’re fairly unimpressive photos themselves. At least they look great from a distance, going closer tends to show they have been scaled above their resolution. It also reveals any noise present in an image or unintended motion blur etc so you really have to have your photos up to snuff.

I moved from the right to left of the gallery (I have a sneaking suspicion I went the wrong way as the descriptions tended to be at the end of a series of images). After the initial bout of heavily edited photos things calmed down a little and I was able to appreciate the eye of the various photographers more.

I especially liked a couple of photos by Mark McPherson and Juha Tolonen. They each had an image that told a story, and were also something I just wouldn’t have thought to photograph. For exmaple, one of the images is of a parking lot with a (presumably) recently painted hand rail in bright yellow. Below the handrail is a splash of yellow paint running down the slope. I like how you can feel the frustration that must have been caused when the paint can was knocked over. I think a photo that can tell a story, even a simple one, without needing anything but itself is incredibly interesting.

My favourite photographer was Eva Fernandez, there’s a stunning panoramic of what looks like a Christmas tree on a hill surrounded by suburbia. The stormy clouds really make that image for me. I also liked her discarded objects series featuring weathered household objects such as tables and violin cases that she recovered and photographed in a studio environment, depriving the object of any context.

A number of photographers commented that they were no longer doing street photography or had been forced to take steps to conceal their photography due to a decline in the public perception. Where in the 80’s people were apparently unconcerned with being captured in a candid shot they are now much more likely to be wary of a person with a big SLR camera. This is a shame as it will no doubt lessen the number of records of typical Perth life of the period we live in today.

Overall I feel this is an exhibit worth your time to see, especially if you find yourself at UWA anyway. It did leave me with a feeling that perhaps I’m missing something in my ‘arty’ sense. The majority of photos on exhibit didn’t do much for me, but the ones that did are worth the effort, especially to see printed large. This was the real take away point for me, I need to start printing some of my better images and sticking them up around the house or giving them to a good home, photos look great big!

The Transient States exhibit is open until Friday 12th July 2009.

Those of you following the Team Fortress 2 ‘Meet the <blank>’ series will be pleased to learn that the ‘Meet the Spy‘ video has been released.

iinet plebs can grab the high def version in all it’s freezone goodness from the 3FL mirror. If you missed the previous ones you can grab them from the mirror too. My favourite is still the heavy weapons guy, pitty they don’t have that one in HD.