Michael Dowse

Fixing Kiwibank’s Account Number Fields

In Kiwibank’s online banking the Account Number is split into four fields. To copy an account number you have to either copy and past in sections, or type it out. I do this a couple of times per week whenever I pay someone new. After months of mild irritation I wrote a Chrome extension to automatically change the 4 fields into one field which strips out hyphens and whitespace and reinserts the number into the original 4 fields. It then shows the number in the original fields so I can check it’s correct.

I’m sure Kiwibank have their reasons but I think it’s safer this way. Copy/pasting the whole number is far less error prone than typing out the number, and I still get to review the number in it’s correct format to make sure it copied correctly.

I’m not publishing the Chrome extension, but the javascript is here: https://gist.github.com/1247125.

Camping by the Waikato river

I may be wrong but I think the idea of legacy is for fools. We will all be dust. Everything we think we made will be dust.

— Alex Bogusky

Subliminal Stimuli

Yesterday I signed up for Spotify. Pick a song, any song, Spotify lets you play it instantly, on your computer, or your phone, or your ipod. For someone like me who loves music but can’t be bothered keeping their local music library up to date it’s a game changer.

The free account I’m on is loaded up with free advertising and the major launch partner is Coca Cola, so for a few hours my music listening was occasionally interrupted with ads for Coke*.

Suprise suprise, later that night I felt like a glass of Coke. I knew it was probably the advertising to blame as I’ve barely been drinking Coke for the last year. I try not to be influenced by ads, and I knew I was being influenced, so it should have been easy to pick a different drink from the fridge. But I really wanted Coke.

Ten minutes and $2.40 later I was back on Spotify with a glass of Coke in my hand.

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Today I watched a series of Derren Brown videos on Youtube. Derren demonstrates conversational hypnosis, subliminal advertising and the like.

When he’s not convincing people to hand him their wallets, or persuading the bookie that his losing ticket is in fact “the dog you’re looking for”, the most interesting parts of his videos are the comments from the victims.

In particular their are a few videos where he’s playing his tricks on psychology professors and students. These guys know what he’s trying to do, they even understand how he’s trying to do it. But they still can’t beat him in his mind games.

This led to me thinking about how our subconscious is easily influenced by everything around us, yet we rarely understand exactly how and to what effect we are being influenced.

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* Yes, I think Spotify is worth the ads, but I am looking into their premium accounts.

166 Years

In August of 1844 a German explorer named Ludwig Leichhardt departed Sydney to explore the inland section of Australia now known as the Northern Territories.

The expedition party initially numbered 10, but two turned back and another was killed in an attack on their campsite by aboriginals (natives). The remaining 7 completed a 3,000 mile overland journey to reach Port Essington in December of 1845.

During this journey Leichhardt’s party became the first Europeans to encounter the aboriginals of the Kakadu region.

The aboriginals were hunter-gatherers, using stone to make tools and charcoal for fires. They drew pictures of the foods they ate on rocks to serve as a survival guide that lasted many generations. They’d been living this way for more than 50,000 years, surviving an ice age along the way.

A complex kinship system was used to describe how people relate to each other. In the kinship system people identify those around them as mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, cousins, potential marriage partners, etc, regardless of their blood relationship.

In hindsight, studies have shown that the aboriginal kinship system is the best method ever encountered to avoid incest and keep bloodlines diverse within a small community.

166 years later I’m standing in Kakadu National Park along with a couple of hundred other tourists to watch the sunset. Other than some pictures carved into the rocks there’s no sign of the aboriginals that used to live here. The park ranger mentions another park ranger who has aboriginal blood, but that’s the closest we get.

Clouds are obscuring the sunset so I’ve got my iPhone out and I’m flicking between three different cell networks as I try to check my email. After a couple of minutes the sun slips below the horizon and we’re done.

I drive back to my hotel and get to work programming a website that will almost certainly be obsolete within a decade.

Darwin, Kakadu National Park & Sydney

Highlights: Snakes, Crocodiles, 130k speed limits, eating Kangaroo, almost running out of petrol in the outback, meeting cool people, doing business.

Getting amped for this season :)

Rarotonga 2011 :)

10pm, driving, I stop at the lights. A man runs onto the road and sprays something white all over my windscreen. I can’t see, I’m freaking out. Now he’s cleaning my windscreen, why? I’m half expecting him to ask for money, but he keeps cleaning. My windscreen’s clean, he walks back to the side of the road. Confused, but grateful I give him a thumbs up, he smiles. Green light, I’m off. He’s waiting for the next red light.