Archive | March 2013
March 22, 2013  

Privacy vs Desire

There seems to be a huge uproar about the internet’s assault on my privacy.

Most recently there was a bit of a hub-bub about Google changing their privacy policy and a rush to ‘opt-out’ to prevent the big G sharing data between the various services I use – in order to protect my privacy.

At the very same time the internet is stealing hours and hours of precious time, checking for news, reading facebook and twitter and so on. And this theft is in many cases deliberate. (I posted some thoughts about ‘desire’ and the internet recently.)

Why is there no uproar about the assault on my time? It seems to me that loss of privacy that may cause ‘potential harm’ is of little consequence compared to ‘actual time’ I am losing. So if giving Google some increased access to my personal data allows them to make their services more useful and relevant for me it seems like a good trade. 

I was looking for a quote to close this post. A recently famous Steve Jobs quote came to mind, but instead a far older one is appropriate:

“If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.” – Benjamin Franklin

March 21, 2013  

Spiral – Boat Setup

Some of the things I have learnt about boat setup… starting from the back:

  • Rudder: The centre bolt needs to be regularly checked to make sure that it is tight enough that the rudder can’t wobble in the rudder box. As a guide, the rudder should be able to stay in any position you leave it without it falling down when you wheel the boat into the water.
  • Traveller: The hardest one for me to get right. It will be the subject of a post in its own right
  • Mainsheet: Class rules allow a 1:1 mainsheet at the outboard end of the boom. Most sailors are currently using 2:1 purchase. The 1:1 does take a little more muscle (actually 50% more… since typical purchase is 3:1 and I recommend 2:1)… however the reward is a lot less mainsheet to pull in which makes all of the mark roundings, and other tactical maneuvers much easier.
  • Outhaul: I use a 6:1 purchase and make sure everything is low friction enough that it can be easily pulled on even when the boom is under heavy vang load. The 6:1 purchase makes pulling it on easier, but also makes setting it more accurate. The outhaul seems quite critical on the Spiral
  • Centrecase: Make sure that the centreboard can’t fall out of the centrecase if you capsize (when it is not tied in). If needed, pack out the centrecase with seat belt webbing.
  • Vang and cunningham: Make sure they work – most seems to have this right.
  • Toe straps: They should be quite tight. If you are very very fit (see my post on fitness) then it might make sense to make them a bit longer, but tighter toestraps give more ‘connection’ to the boat. And longer toe straps don’t often allow people to lean out further – rather it just allows them to have a ‘slouched’ leaning style… which is not good!
  • Stiff, fair, light hulls and boards. (Make sure that the hull and boards are on weight and polished and stiff.)
  • Sails. Spiral sails actually are pretty hardy. The main thing to look for is that when the sail is set up on the beach with no cunningham and just modest mainsheet tension, that the sail has a nice aerofoil shape. Badly made sails will show non aerofoil shapes. Old, tired sails will need a bit of cunningham tension to look right.
March 21, 2013  

Angular Adventures – Part 1

I have spent some time recently working with Angular.js and thought I would record some thoughts. In particular I was working on an RSS Reader type application with ‘infinite scrolling’ functionality. So in dot points:

  • It was very quick to become somewhat productive. The ‘phonecat’ example app and on line documentation are thorough. The documentation itself is pretty dense – so it is best to work through the tutorial first.
  • In my experience the two way data binding was both the greatest strength and ultimate downfall of Angular.js in my application. Two way data binding meant getting a functional application up was extremely quick… a lot of typing was saved coupling models to views. On the other hand, for a predominantly ‘read’ application, there seemed to be some performance degradation with maintaining this two way data binding.
  • I did manage to get an interesting ‘infinite scrolling’ implementation which I hope to share in a later post
  • The $resource service made working with a json RESTful api a breeze

So overall, for a dynamic application involving both reading and writing of dynamic data Angular.js could well make you life a lot easier. For predominantly ‘read only’ applications it may not be the right fit.