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Invisible Obama and Phantom Tweeters

The just concluded 2012 Republican National Convention was memorable because Clint Eastwood gave a kooky speech while talking to an empty chair. Apparently, he was castigating an invisible potty mouthed Barack Obama who supposedly sat in the chair. Even before poor Mitt Romney took the stage to give his acceptance speech, the twittersphere was a buzz with snarky and often humorous tweets on the surreal “performance” of the Oscar winning, husky-voiced, octogenarian actor-director.

One of them is @InvisibleObama. He (or she, or they) started a series of funny tweets– often at the expense of Mitt Romney and the GOP) with gems like:-

When Mitt Romney says “Mr. Chairman”, do you think he’s referring to me?

I’m behind Mitt! No seriously. I’m right behind him.

Pretty soon, everyone joined in and even President Obama chimed in with this:-

This seat's taken.
“This seat’s taken.” tweeted Obama

Memes started popping up:-

Meanwhile, our own Communications and Information Minister (who has the dubious honor of a permanent hashtag of #yorais attached to every tweet regarding him) encouraged tweeting Malaysians to tweet between 8.15pm and 9.15pm on the 31st of August. The topic is should be about freedom, independence and…how grateful Malaysians feel towards “promises fulfilled” (which is the theme of this year’s independence day).

While Rais Yatim claimed that the massive simul-tweet campaign is a success, others didn’t think so when they analyzed the tweets.

Politweet reported a spontaneous need for 111 Malaysians to tweet about their bowl of Curry Mee in Queensbays Mall at around the same time in almost the same language on their Facebook page.

It is interesting to note the prominence of social media in our modern political arena. While one can control the message, one can’t control the medium– without being discovered. In parting, there is only one way to compare what happened in the US with what happened in Malaysia: While Americans are tweeting about an invisible president, invisible Malaysians are tweeting about Merdeka!

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Stop 114A!

In a further erosion of our rights to free expression on the Internet, all Malaysians should oppose the newly enacted Section 114A of the Malaysian Evidence Act 2012.

This new law is unprecedented in the sense that the innocent are presumed guilty first and the burden of proof is shifted from the prosecutor to the prosecuted. This law has no place in a modern civil society and should be repealed.

More Information can be found at this link: http://stop114a.wordpress.com

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I got hacked and I didn’t know it

So I logged into my website recently and discovered I’d been hacked since 6th of July 2012. These hackers have been squatting in my digital real estate long enough for a slice of bread to become a thriving mushroom colony.

Fixing it was surprisingly simple. A few tweaks to some files and everything’s back to normal– “normal” here meaning “a website that continues to attract approximately the same audience as my post-modernist avant-garde dance performance.” I have to wonder about the hackers’ motivation. Did they think they’d struck digital gold? ‘Finally! We’ve infiltrated that random guy’s blog about… whatever it is he blogs about!‘

To my digital intruders: I’m genuinely flattered you considered my website worth the effort. It’s like finding out someone broke into your car to steal your collection of car park receipts and that half-eaten KitKat from 2007. I appreciate the validation, though I must inform you that you’ve been performing for an empty theater. My website traffic could generously be described as ‘immediate family members who clicked by accident.’

There is one silver lining to this digital home invasion– they left my original site intact enough for me to restore. That’s surprisingly considerate, like a burglar who only changed the lock on my front gate while leaving my TV, money and valuables in the house intact.

Was it professional courtesy? Pity?

Or perhaps they realized that tampering with my collection of poorly framed photos and rambling posts about nothing would be unnecessarily cruel…

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Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac

Even though I love Apple’s iWork, I’ve always had a soft spot for Microsoft Office. In my mind, iWork is like a sleek Ferrari—fun, stylish, and exhilarating for the occasional joyride—whereas Office is the reliable Toyota you use daily to get from point A to B.

That’s why any new release of Microsoft Office for Mac piques my interest. It’s the collision of two ideologies: Apple, the temple of aesthetics, meets Microsoft, the creator of Fisher-Price-themed operating systems like Windows XP (we all remember the bright blues and lime greens). Their offspring can sometimes be spectacular—like the very first version of Microsoft Excel for Mac—or an absolute train wreck, like Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac.

To give credit where it’s due, Microsoft writes excellent code for office productivity software. I can’t imagine a workday without Microsoft Outlook keeping my schedule in check or Excel helping me wrestle meaning out of chaotic data dumps with complex pivot tables.

But that’s the office.

At home, in front of my big-screen Mac, I just want to enjoy my work. I want to cleanse my brain of Windows’ clunky interface and bask in beautifully crafted icons. When I do need to handle office tasks, I prefer to use elegantly designed software like iWork. But Pages and Numbers can only take me so far. Sometimes, I have to brace myself, fire up Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, and get the job done.

And that’s when my Mac transforms into something unholy—a Windows PC.

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is so poorly designed, so utterly perplexing—especially on big-screen Macs—that J.J. Abrams could have set Lost on its interface. Common features are buried so deep within the labyrinthine menus that they rarely, if ever, see the light of day.

Thankfully, this may finally change with Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. It’s not quite a Lexus, but Microsoft has clearly learned a few lessons. After taking it for a test drive, here are the key improvements I loved:-

Fast and more responsive: I’m blown away by the speed. Applications load up almost instantly, and within seconds, you can dive into Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. Typing in Word feels snappy—letters appear instantly as you type. Compared to the sluggish, unresponsive mess that was Office 2008, this alone is a compelling reason to upgrade.

Snazzier Templates: Okay, Steve Jobs probably wouldn’t be caught dead using any of these PowerPoint templates, but they’re the best I’ve seen in Microsoft Office—hands down. In fact, they’re even better than the ones in the PC version. The best part? Full compatibility. No more exporting beautifully crafted Keynote presentations just to make them PowerPoint-friendly.

Microsoft Word

Improved User Interface: The dreaded floating “palette” is gone! In its place, we now have the ribbon, which first appeared in Microsoft Office 2010 for PC. Some people love it, others hate it—but personally, I’ve grown to appreciate it. When you’ve got 12 different windows open at once, the ribbon’s structured layout makes life much easier.