The Awasu 2.1.2.alpha1 alpha release (what's this?) is now available here.

The big addition is multiple workpads. You can now create more than one of them, drag and drop items between them and also from the channel windows, edit items and add your own comments so that you can generate annotated reports. It's all pretty cool (have fun, Earl :-)).

I'm now going to toddle off to reformat and rebuild my dev machine from scratch. What I wouldn't give for an operating system that doesn't degrade quite so quickly. Sigh...

I'll see you on the other side (I hope... :-()

I've always been fascinated by what makes people tick. I'm re-reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion right now and studying The Prisoner's Dilemma was a life-changing process.

This showed up in my Awasu today and talked about some things I hadn't really thought much about before.

Psychologist Max Bazerman says that during the past ten years he has earned more than $17,000 by auctioning $20 bills to his MBA students at Northwestern University. In the course of almost two hundred of his actions, the top two bids never totaled less than $39, and in one instance totaled $407.

How does such a thing happen?!

It's sometimes referred to as the winner's curse and the phrase popped up quite a bit during the Google auction IPO But this kind of thing is prevelant in many aspects of the things we do, basically anytime we're competing with others for some resource: a house for sale, a job, world domination (seriously! How much money did the US and USSR sink into the arms race?).

The best linked-to article is this one:

What does it all mean? It means that there are other forces driving human negotiation - an auction is a classic negotiation - than reason.

This auction is driven first by greed, then by fear, and finally by a kind of suicidal vengefulness.

Why are people so weird?

A guy I know recently announced that he was quitting IT to take a shot a being a professional photographer. I've never met him and know him only online at a popular computer programmers's forum that we've both hung out for many years but I know he's a nice guy and a man of character. I wasn't aware that he had a portfolio at Flickr but when I checked it out, I was gobsmacked.

It's really good

Best of luck, Paul. You're going to do pretty well, I think.

I went to see Tokyo Godfathers the other day and enjoyed it immensely. However, it turned out that the person I went with had not only never seen any Japanese anime but didn't even know such a thing existed! So I zipped out and purchased a copy of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke for her, both by Hayao Miyazaki, a living legend amongst Japanese and foreign animators alike. If you haven't seen these movies yet, or anime at all, do yourself a favour and get a copy. Especially Spirited Away (which took an Oscar in 2005); you'll be amazed.

Coincidentally, the two of us went to see another Japanese movie yesterday although this time a live-action one. Now, if you had to sum up Japanese film-making in a single word it would be this: slow. The pacing of most films is lethargic enough to really annoy most Westerners but sometimes the payoff is worth it. Japanese horror movies are truly frightening, not your typical Hollywood bloodfest but spooky and terrifying. The Ring was originally a Japanese movie and Audition is a film that literally left me physically ill by the end (although all the sake and Japanese food and sake I had consumed before the movie may have had something to do with it :roll:).

Check 'em out. You'll be glad you did

The Awasu 2.1.1 beta release (what's this?) has been released and is available here.

The big change is, of course, folders in My Channels but there has been a bunch of other work done as well, in particular, some changes and features that people asked for in the forums. Full details are in the release notes.

In prior releases I've only provided a list of the most interesting changes but I've gone back to a comprehensive change list. As you can see, we've been pretty busy

Have fun!