singingfish’s blog

The difference between aggressive and assertive

nobody@vox.com(singingfish) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:49:54 +1100

Just for future reference - I was having a conversation with someone the other day who made it clear that they didn't know the difference even though they ought to.

Assertive is not taking any shit from other people.

Aggressive is handing out shit to other people.

Of course you can be both at the same time, but assertive by itself is far better. If you don't know the difference and you find people give you trouble, you probably need to tune down the agression and up the assertiveness.

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Mad Keen Wowzers

nobody@vox.com(singingfish) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:58:22 +1100

It has come to my attention that if you google for the term "mad keen wowzers" you get no results, so I thought I'd provide a link to a famous image of some mad keen wowzers:

300px-Americangothic

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Stupid exam answers #359

nobody@vox.com(singingfish) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 21:52:28 +1100

Yes, this is a real answer. Another student scraping the bottom of the barrel. Fortunately this is school level, not university ;-)

DSCN8018

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How to make windows suck less part 2 - multimedia.

nobody@vox.com(singingfish) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 22:06:12 +1100

Right, for whatever reason, you've chosen to buy a windows PC. Bad choice if you ask me, but hell, I'm not you, thankfully.

First up, you've hardened your computer against spyware by following this advice. Next up you need to be able to play multimedia files no problem.

For audio files, you want Media Monkey or iTunes for Windows. Unless you own an ipod, I'd probably go for the former. If you own an iPod, go for the latter unless your computer literacy is good and you like to troubleshoot.

Video is a different matter. Video files are complicated. I once spent a whole two weeks getting to the bottom of video file support as part of my job. The answer is, at the end of the day the most widely supported video format in the world is VideoCD format. Pretty much every computer, dvd player, set top box and other magical doohickey can play this format.

But that's not what you want. You want to be able to play everything. On a mac, it's simple, install Perian and Flip4Mac. On linux, it's simple, install mplayer and win32-codecs. For some reason on windows it's complicated (see the first paragraph of this post).

The first thing you want to do is to remove Windows Media Player. The advice here is probably sound. The reason you want to remove windows media is complicated, but the essence is that microsoft is more interested in entering a benificial business relationship with entertainment and media companies than it is in entering a benifical business relationship with you. Besides WMP doesn't play the most common video formats, so it's best to get rid of it straight away.

As far as the software you can install goes, I hear that the home theatre crowd like Zoomplayer. I haven't used or even heard of it beofre, but it's probably worth a try. My own suggestion is to download and install VLC for most media files, and Media Player Classic. After this, you want save any downloaded files to the desktop, right click on them, select "open with"and then pick any of these programs until you get an idea of which one you like best.

Hope this helps, kthxbye!

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Bread Maker Advice.

nobody@vox.com(singingfish) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:13:59 +1000

I've made a lot of bread in a home bread maker for the last 5 years. I've burned through 2 machines (I'm on my third). The second cheapest Breville Baker's Oven bread maker has been perfectly good for me. My second bread maker was the cheapest model of Baker's Oven, and I was never that happy with it. Here are the steps to success:

Here's a photograph of my standard bread making ingredients:

DSCN7899

Here's the recipe:

Add the following into the breadmaker in order:

1 375 ml cup of water (that's the metal cup)
A slug of oil (1-2tbsp) 3 teaspoons of salt, 6-8 teaspoons of sugar
3 imperial cups of wholemeal flour (that's the clear plastic cup on top of the flour bag) I buy 5 or 10 kilo bags of flour from my organic food shop)
A slug of hulled millet ( 1-2 tbsp) some pumpkin seeds and some sunflower seeds. Of this everything is optional except the millet which seems to be a really useful bread improver.

Some enzymatic bread improver which I get in the supermarket.
1-3 teaspoons of yeast depending on the temperature.

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Securing your new windows computer

nobody@vox.com(singingfish) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 21:42:08 +1000

Here are some instructions I believe will help you make your new Windows computer more secure as a home user. The source of most of this is from here.

So you're going to have to maintainin your own computer and for whatever reason you've chosen Windows. The single biggest security hole with a Windows computer is Internet Explorer. Stop using it. This is the simplest solution to the problem of spyware and many viruses for home users. It's probably the simplest solution for professional administrators as well, but they have a vested interest in keeping their jobs, so they need to keep themselves busy ;-)

Follow the procedure below. You should consider it unsafe to connect your computer to the internet before you've completed this. Doing this means that you won't need to run anti-spyware software and greatly reduces the need to run anti-virus software. This will improve the performance of your computer and dramatically reduce the incidence of "mysterious software problems".

Step 1.

Download and install Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/).

Download the installer and save it on a usb thumb drive or burn to a CD from another computer.

Step 2.

Set firefox as your default browser using the following menu options:

Firefox 2: "Tools -> Options -> Main / System Defaults -> (checkmark) Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup -> Check Now"

Step 3.

Secure Internet Explorer

Unfortunately Microsoft have made it almost impossible to completely uninstall IE. Use the following procedure to secure it and remove as many traces as possible of it from the system:

Secure Internet Explorer

    * Open Internet Explorer
    * Go to Tools | Internet Options... | Security
    * Set the security level for all zones except trusted sites to high
    * Set the security level for trusted sites to medium
    * While the trusted sites zone is selected, click on the Sites... button
    * Uncheck Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone
    * Add:
          o http://*.update.microsoft.com
          o https://*.update.microsoft.com
          o http://download.windowsupdate.com

With only the above three sites in the trusted sites zone, the trusted sites zone set to medium security, and all other zones set to high security, Internet Explorer is as secure as it can be while still leaving Windows Update functional. To be as safe as possible, use Internet Explorer only when absolutely necessary. IE generally has known highly critical security vulnerabilities, and even well-known sites can contain exploits that a fully patched version of Internet Explorer is vulnerable to. In addition to securing Internet Explorer, you may also want to hide the icon as described in the next section.
[edit]
Hide the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop

Right-click on the Desktop -> click Properties -> Desktop -> Customize Desktop -> Desktop Icons -> Internet Explorer <uncheck this

Another way (in Windows XP, possibly different for other versions of windows) Start -> Set Program Access and Defaults -> Add/Remove Windows Components -> Uncheck Internet Explorer -> Click Next. Now Internet Explorer has been partially uninstalled.

OK, now it's much safer to connect your computer to the internet. Be sure to install your operating system and especially web browser updates regurlarly!

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Toxic Boss Syndrome

nobody@vox.com(singingfish) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 10:52:40 +1000

Note: You can point your friends and colleagues to this page with the web address http://xrl.us/35qk (easier to write down or spell out loud).

A very good friend of mine is having problems with their boss. In my opinion as an ex-psychologist and management researcher, this person is a corporate psychopath. I did some work on the personality profile of psychopaths a few years ago, and also had a fair amount of professional dealing with people suffering a variety of personality disorders. So what I'm going to do here is to write a little about how to identify a corporate psychopath, and look at your options as to what you can do about it. By way of warning, there are no easy solutions, and most of the things that you can normally do to fix difficult social situations will not work.

What is a corporate psychopath?

The ABC Catalyst show had a nice segment on corporate psychopaths here (video is available from that page) They have a 6 question checklist on their website (here). The theory is that the more yes answers you provide, the higher the chance you do have a real toxic boss. I don't particularly like the questionnaire - it's missing some important personality attributes like:

Does your boss use bullying and intimidation as their primary management technique?
Is your boss impulsive?
Does your boss make frequent mistakes which they cover up by denial or blaming other people?
Does your boss apparently not suffer from anxiety?
Does your boss make decisions without consulting the rest of his team?
Does your boss try to set members of his team against each other through manipulative behaviour?
Is your boss completely self-centred (narcissistic)?
Does your boss have lax personal ethics in the way they deal with other people?

What does "psychopath" mean?

A psychopath is someone that lacks empathy. This means that they are unable to see the world from another person's point of view. This is the core of the problem. Imagine a child who is born without the ability to see colour. As they progress through their life, there is a lot of stuff that they can't see, and have never experienced, so it is very difficult, perhaps impossible for them to appreciate what colour is, and the value that it brings to the experience of other people. Colours are concrete things that people use for information (e.g. traffic lights), and we tend to talk about them a lot, so people with complete colour blindness realise early on that there's a problem and work on strategies to deal with the problem.

People who don't have the ability to feel empathy similarly develop strategies to deal with their disability, but because other people's feelings are much more abstract than colours, and because people communicate about them in different ways (compared to colour) the afflicted individual is unlikely to see it as a problem, and they will develop strange ways of dealing with it that are focused on manipulating the people around them.

This means that a psychopath will have a fundamentally different set of motivations than the rest of the population. They don't recognise the existence of other people's feelings, and so their perspective in social situations are quite alien for normal people. In general their motivations are to get other people to do exactly what they want, with a complete disregard for the consequences.

Because of the severity of this problem, some psychopaths are unable to live by society's rules, because these rules are completely alien to them. These people are criminal psychopaths and probably account for about 10% of the prison population. Psychopaths who can internalise some kind of rule system can live reasonably normal lives, but will make the lives of those around them very difficult. One way a psychopath can internalise a set of rules that could keep them out of trouble would be from an upbringing that stresses the importance of authority, and presents simple rules to live by - e.g. in some kinds of religious situations. However, they are likely to strive obtain a position of authority for themselves, because they get big internal rewards from being able to control other people's behaviour.

The overall incidence of psychopathy in the population is about 1%. About 2% of senior managers fit the criteria for psychopathy, and as mentioned above, about 10% of the prison population.

Why do psychopaths do better in management positions?

I must admit that I don't fully understand this. Two things come to mind. Firstly in a hyper-competitive world like the modern workplace, ruthless individuals have an advantage. Coupled with this, because psychopaths live in a kind of "parallel reality" where normal values and rules are for exploitation of personal advantage rather than for promoting social harmony, this provides them with a perceptual advantage.

What are the outcomes for organisations dominated by corporate psychopaths?

Very bad. The American company Enron, which collapsed due to poor accountability is often cited an example of this. Robert Maxwell, a British media tycoon whose business empire colapsed shortly after he committed suicide is another example. In the aftermath it was discovered that he'd stolen the company pension fund.

In larger organisations, corporate psychopaths can "hide" and their activities are marked by high staff turnover, poor outcomes for staff and poor overall performance that can severly affect the health of the organisation. Poor staff outcomes can include sleep loss, an increase in mental health problems

What can you do about a corporate psychopath if you're working with one?

Unfortunately very little. The simplest course of action is to leave. However, this is often not a possibility and besides, it just makes it someone else's problem. Two things not to do:

1. Don't approach your boss about the problem.

Really, don't no matter how tempting! Problems in social situations have a completely different meaning to them than to you. Alerting them to the problem sends the psychopath a strong signal; it shows them that they have leverage over you and clarifies the buttons that they can press to manipulate you. To the psychopath you do not have a complicated internal life, and you are there exclusively for their benefit and for them to control.

2. Don't arrange for rehabilitation.

If you can communicate the problem to your boss' management, management may chose to try to rehabilitate them. This will not work for much the same reason that alerting them to a personal problem will not work. Providing them with rehabilitation will give them a valuable learning experience, and enable them to expand their repertoire of techniques for manipulating and controlling people.

So what can you do?

Aside from resigning, if it's possible to do the very difficult job of alerting their managers to the problem, along with stressing that rehabilitation will not have the intended consequences, then there may be some hope. The psychopath should have a job that minimises interaction with other people. This will mean removing their authority for core functions of their job. In most cases dismissal is the only long term solution. This will have major benefits to the organisation and for the staff formerly working under this person.

There are professionals who can assess the extent and severity of this disability, and if possible they should be used. They can help you to provide an appropriate intervention, but in almost all cases, the best intervention is dismissal,and as quickly as possible. Where possible, references should be refused , so that the problem is not passed on to someone else.

Further information.

The problem of workplace psychopaths has only been recognised relatively recently. If you want to find out more, I recommend watching the Catalyst segment I mentioned at the beginning. If you want to look at the academic literature, visit Google Scholar, or your favourite search engine, and search for "corporate psychopath", "industrial psychopath" or "snakes in suits" (this last one is the name of a book). Please use the comments section here for questions or examples of your own experiences.

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Lightly baked dc-in board

nobody@vox.com(singingfish) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:41:25 +1000

So my laptop had some trouble with the DC in board - the cable neds to be jiggled so that the battery knows to charge. So I ordered a 2nd hand one for $35 from the ibook scrap yard. Meanwhile I have a temporary fix that works but immobilises me somewhat. Photo below.

Ibook_dcin

The little "knot" above the cable tie provides just the right amount of upward pressure to keep the supply connected ... for now ... Crack the case on the weekend :-)

[Update] even small amounts of movement can re-start the problem. Fortunately I have this photo for a reference when I need to re-tie it.

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QotD: Celebrity Look-Alike

nobody@vox.com(singingfish) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:18:32 +1000

What celebrity do you most often get told you resemble?
Submitted by Leets.

It's a toss up between Malcom McLaren, Mick Hucknall, Lou Reed, Leo Sayer and Harpo Marx depending on when I last got my hair cut and how hard I've been living.

[Update] OK, Seth Green too apparently, but I think he needs to age a little bit to catch up with me (just a little)

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Test post

nobody@vox.com(singingfish) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 09:24:49 +1000

testing the new group... delete this later

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