What I Learnt Today

Our Latin teacher, Fr Fraser, had a ‘canon’ of ten books which all educated people should have read.

He was never invited to submit his list to The Book Show on Radio National, but should have been.

However, finance writer Trevor Sykes was a recent guest. His list (below) had one book in common with Fr Fraser’s canon – can you guess which?

I found it interesting that all of Sykes’ choices are available ‘in the public domain’, and therefore can be downloaded free of charge (or nearly so) for Kindle or iBooks from either projectgutenberg.org or iTunes. It is a particularly erudite selection for someone Fr Fraser would have dismissed for studying ‘ecos’.

Project Gutenberg offers 36,000 ebooks for free download. These have all been digitised by volunteers – a massive undertaking. Each book is ‘out of copyright’ .

In Australia, copyright exists on a book for the life of the author plus 50 years.

In the USA, copyrights exists until 95 years after publication, and in the EU it is life plus 70 years.

As Orwell died in 1950, the Australia Project Gutenberg page is allowed to display ‘Animal Farm’ (published in 1945), but the main Project Gutenberg sticks to the USA law and does not yet allow it to be downloaded (not until 2040, in fact!).

Trevor Skyes is a Wodehouse buff. PJ Wodehouse is also one of my favourite authors. The tiny Seaforth Library had all 35 short stories and 11 novels featuring Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. (published between 1915 and 1974!)

As Wodehouse started publishing while still young, and lived till 1975 (the ripe old age of 94), even his 1915 ‘Right Ho Jeeves’ is still copyright in Australia (till 2025). It is however public domain in the USA. (Although the 95 year expiration is not yet up, all works published before 1923 are exempted and considered copyright free.)

The copyright laws are completely ridiculous!

Fr Fraser’s canon can be the subject of a future WILT.

Today, its Trevor Sykes’ turn.

 

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Max OSX 10.7 “Lion” was released from captivity this morning.

If you are currently running “Snow Leopard”, you can download it from the Mac App Store The Mac App Store is also available from the Apple Menu.

If you are on Leopard, or an even earlier ‘cat’, you will need to wait till the DVD version is released next month.

The cost is $32 and the download is 3.5 Gb – huge!

Note: If you want to install Lion on another of your Macs and want to avoid another huge download, after downloading you can find the app ‘Install Apple Lion’ in your Applications folder and transfer it to the other Mac (across you’re lcoal network, or via a USB drive) You will need to do this before you install Lion, as it is automatically deleted after installation. If it is ‘too late’, you can find Lion in the purchased section of the Mac App Store and download it on the mac (usng the same AppleID) without additional charge.

After downloading, installing is easy. During my install, it seemed to be stuck a number of times (28 mnutes to go for 28 minutes!)- it paid to be patient as eventually all went well.

Lion is not compatible with some old Mac software (that written for PowerPC), so do not upgrade if there are some old programs that you depend upon. (this is our situation at work)

Some of the new features:

• New ‘Gestures’ on MacBooks – drag two fingers up or down the trackpad to scroll – drag two fingers left or right to go forward or back a page. Drag four finger up to open “Mission Control”. Pinch to zoom in, or tap with two fingers. Note that the scrolling works like the iPad and may be the opposite of what you expect. You can change this setting in System Preferences.
• New LaunchPad, available from the Dock,  which shows all your apps.
• New Mission Control, which shows all your open windows, also available from the Dock. You can have multiple virtual desktops that have different applications within them, and scroll from one to the other with a three finger swipe. See http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_use_spaces_mac_os_x_lion
• A newly designed Mail app, which is much better, particualry for searching.
• ‘Full Screen Mode’ for most apps, available with Ctl-Cmd-F (I had to change the gloabl search setting in Evernote which also had this shortcut to allow it to work). Press ESC to return to normal view.
• Auto-save in iWork apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), which keeps multiple versions of the document youa re working on. A Time Machine like utility allows you to go back to a point in time before you actually wiped out chapters 4- 30 of the book you have spent the last year working on.
• AirDrop is an easy way to share documents across a local network.

I’ll continue playing with Lion and report back on anything else of interest.

For the record, the Apple OSX Big Cat Series is :

• 10.0: “Cheetah”
• 10.1: “Puma”
• 10.2: “Jaguar”
• 10.3: “Panther”
• 10.4: “Tiger”
• 10.5: “Leopard”
• 10.6: “Snow Leopard”
• 10.7: “Lion”

My predictions

• 10.8:  “Lynx”
• 10.9:  “Cougar”

You read it here first.

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Le Tour de France is getting to  the business end – Stage 16, Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux to the Gap, 160 km across the top of the Alps. Australia’s Cadel Evans remains 2 minutes behind the yellow jersey holder Frenchman Thomas Voekler. The race finishes in Paris on July 24th. By then an astonishing10 million spectators will have watched the riders passing by first hand.

Those cyclists competing for the overall prize are some of the fittest atheletes in the world. Navigating the high mountains requires tremendous power to weight ratios.

In the Conversation, David Roufett of Victoria University analyses the Science of Elite Cycling in a two part series.

During the first half of the race, most of the riding is done on flat land. The primary force for the riders to overcome is wind resistance. The pack (or peleton) races along at 40km/hr – with riders in the middle of the pack benefiting from the ‘slipstream’ effect created by the riders in front of them, but risking crashes, and being left behind by a breakaway group. Riders who specialise in sprinting – larger, stronger men – come to the fore.

http://theconversation.edu.au/the-science-of-elite-cycling-tour-de-france-sta…

During the second half of the race, the course traverses the mountains. The primary force for riders to overcome is gravity, and the lighter men are advantaged. The best riders can maintain effort intensity close to 90% of their maximum while climbing for long periods – which is an astounding display of fitness. They are at risk of ‘bonking’, which apparently in this case is not a good thing. ‘Bonking’ is when you run out of energy and hit the wall.

http://theconversation.edu.au/the-science-of-elite-cycling-tour-de-france-sta…

David Roufett’s articles make an excellent companion for those who are staying up late in front of SBS.

 

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What would you do if a coffee cart gave you $5 too much change?

What if the barista in the cart was completely obnoxious?

The NAB have ‘conducted a series of honesty experiments‘ which have ‘established’ that Australians are very honest (so they deserve an honest credit card, apparently).

While it is touching to see people going out of their way to do the right thing, the most striking think about this ad is the great lines given to the obnoxious barista. Makes you want to work in a coffee cart.

In the other two experiments, a wallet is left lying on a street, and an actor drops $20 bill out of his pocket. Will any be returned?

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