The Maksu- ja Tolliamet perils of internationalization

In these tax declaration times, as a foreigner in Estonia I have a particularly treacherous time to get with the usability of Estonian e-services.

This year the Estonian tax authority (Maksu- ja Tolliamet - emta.ee, twitter) proudly declared that they will accept tax declarations in English:


However, trying to take them up on that promise, disregarding the numerous times I'm thrown into an Estonian-only environment, the English environment doesn't have the 2009 tax declaration I see if I switch to the Estonian one:


Estonian version:



Furthermore, once successfully in the declaration environment, the English version seems completely broken as I for example can't save my changed postal address (which of course works in the Estonian one). I can only deem this complete usability fail.

For the fairness of things and to provoke a debate, I'll share the opinion of a Swedish friend of mine:

"Yeah.. they really should not do it [attempt translation] at all..  no need to, really. Either you learn the language or you get help with it. Your choice (not theirs).

Just as in Sweden where they translate everything into 27 different languages and the tax payers pay for it. Not the tax payers fault that people do not know Swedish.

I do not mind any kind of miniority population but if they are unable to learn Swedish then they should pay for their own translation. Just as I seem to be unable to learn Estonian hence it is my problem to translate what I need, not the Estonian tax payers problem"

On another note, I've finally got a functioning mobile-id, as I was tired of the ridiculous software issues I had with my ID card. There english translation is even more absent, the support because of the jungle of organizations involved is terrible - but I recently was lucky enough to get both competent and helpful feedback when my ID card wasn't working.

xkcd Tech Support Cheat Sheet - now in Swedish

It's absolutely not that I mind visiting my parents, or that I don't love being helpful, but I felt that some attention should be given to this immortal comic strip / flow chart:


Here it is in Swedish, for you, friends and collegues to print and educate each other with:


Do translate it into your own language using the files available in github, then just tell me where to pull from and I can include them. Or just grab the text file and translate to your own language and then I can help with the picture.

I am allowed to do this derivative work off xkcd because "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). More details". This derivative work is thusly also provided under the same license.

( Update: Hah, that was both surprising and very nerdy - Claes Wallin has taken my files, and not made any more translations, but made an SVG (scalable vector graphics) original with scripts to generate PNGs! WTF?! Well, I pulled, and I look forward to where he intends to take that. More than anything, cooperation through github can be fascinating because you see ways other people do things. )

Symphony of Science: auto-tuned science awesomeness

Recently a silly project called Symphony of Science (youtube playlist) opened my eyes to somewhat of a lost treature. I knew my hippie friends admired Carl Sagan, but it took until now to fall in love myself.

Just check out these profound quotes. They may not mean anything to you, but to some of us it is deeply touching:

Carl Sagan:

I find it elevating and exhilarating
To discover that we live in a universe
Which permits the evolution of molecular machines
As intricate and subtle as we

Neil deGrasse Tyson:

I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??

"My own musical tribute to two great men of science. Carl Sagan and his cosmologist companion Stephen Hawking present: A Glorious Dawn - Cosmos remixed. Almost all samples and footage taken from Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Stephen Hawking's Universe series" :

"'We Are All Connected' was made from sampling Carl Sagan's Cosmos, The History Channel's Universe series, Richard Feynman's 1983 interviews, Neil deGrasse Tyson's cosmic sermon, and Bill Nye's Eyes of Nye Series, plus added visuals from The Elegant Universe (NOVA), Stephen Hawking's Universe, Cosmos, the Powers of 10, and more. It is a tribute to great minds of science, intended to spread scientific knowledge and philosophy through the medium of music" :

"'Our Place in the Cosmos', the third video from the Symphony of Science, was crafted using samples from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Richard Dawkins' Genius of Charles Darwin series, Dawkins' TED Talk, Stephen Hawking's Universe series, Michio Kaku's interview on Physics and aliens, plus added visuals from Baraka, Koyaanisqatsi, History Channel's Universe series, and IMAX Cosmic Voyage. The themes present in this song are intended to explore our understanding of our origins within the universe, and to challenge the commonplace notion that humans have a superior or privleged position, both on our home planet and in the universe itself" :

"'The Unbroken Thread' is the fourth video in the Symphony of Science series, and it features David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, and Carl Sagan. The clips used in this installment come from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, David Attenborough's Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, The Life of Mammals, The Living Planet, BBC Life, XVIVO Scientific Animations, IMAX Cosmic Voyage, Jane Goodall's TED Talk, and a clever Guiness Commercial. The themes present in The Unbroken Thread attempt to explore the wild diversity of life on our planet, the intricacy and origin of its mechanisms, and its close relation to all other life forms" :

Also, I've taken up a habit which I encourage to everyone - when you see something cool, google it a bit to follow up on it! Like I've found these awesome books and videos:

• Richard Feynman's "Fun to imagine" interviews
  
• Richard Phillips Feynman - The Last Journey Of A Genius
  
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (torrent download)
  
• Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" (torrent download)
  
• Carl Sagan's "Pale blue dot" (torrent download)
  
• Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" (torrent download)
  
• Carl Sagan's "Contact" (torrent download)
  
• Bill Nye's "Eyes of Nye" (torrent download)

Must-see hilarious nerdy movie clips

I'd like to share with you a few of those movie clips all nerds just should have seen. It's funny, because even though my entire class of course will have seen them, they may be entirely ignored by later or earlier nerd generations. Do you have any favorites I missed?

First out is Look around you, which you just have to see to believe. A hint - it was made in 2002 (youtube playlist and torrent downloads: series 1 and series 2) :

Their periodic table of elements is pretty amazing:


Next, "Sorting out sorting" is an excruciating review of all the basic sorting algorithms. Very educational, very old.

I'll finish off for this time with "Erlang: The Movie", documenting the ground-breaking features of this Ericsson functional programming language. It may not seem much to you, but in the nerd world, these things matter. For artistic reasons best enjoyed muted with Falco "Der Kommissar" playing over it:

See other of my nerdy posts.

Unboxing of Daniel Suarez' "FreedomTM" advance reading copy

I was very excited to finally the ARC Daniel Suarez had the generosity to send me, so I just had to make my first unboxing video (definition of unboxing). Well, I opened the box before, so it's a bit faked, but my excitement is not! Check it out:

I guess receiving a galley implies some obligation to read and review it or something. I will do that as soon as possible, hopefully by when FreedomTM is released publicly in January. In the meantime, check out also my other blog posts about Daemon and my collection of great bookmarks on it.

Thanks by the way go to my friend Björn Falkevik who showed me the simplicity and charm of Bambuser. It's not like we all expect to get hundreds of live viewers of our opinion diarrea, but in situations like this it's nice that anyone can have it accessible and I'm particularly excited about the nice integration with twitter and recently to have live broadcasts directly to facebook. Not to mention the implications of having accessible live video streamed to the world when otherwise you could be forced to surrender your recording... ouch :-)