Tracking Mouse Clicks

Here is another funky app to add some interest to your work day. Anatoliy Zenkov has developed a tool (Mac and PC) to track your mouse pointer during the day. Simply open it up and let it run in the background for as long as you like. 8 hours of mouse tracks from my day today look like this:



The big dots are times when the mouse did not move - for example, the bottom right dot is my lunch break. I've added some extra notes to the image on flickr to explain these dots. My movements around the taskbar are clear, as are mouse movements to the top left - I was using Excel for most of the day, and many of the functions I used were located there, as were the open / close file options. I found this tool on FlowingData. I'd be interested to see your tracks.

Distracted Driving and Cut-throat Capitalism

Here are a few games that are fun and sciencey to keep you sane at work.

Driving whilst Distracted

The New York Times recently published a Distracted Driver game to gauge your distraction while you're texting on the road. The game puts you driving on a road having to negotiate a number of toll booths along the way. The game tests your ability to drive through the correct gates without any distractions, and then it makes you write a couple of text messages whilst still having to negotiate the booths.

After you finish the game, you get a comparison of your result with everyone else who has played. I improved the second time I played, my first results are below. I didn't see a grey lady either time!

The science of mobile phone use whilst driving is a developing field, with most of the research suggesting that you are just as impaired, or more so, if texting or using a hand-held mobile as you are if you are drunk. A couple of great resources if you are interested are:

1. The Dutch national road safety research institute (SWOV). Their publication SWOV Fact sheet: Use of mobile phone while driving was published in 2008 and contains a great deal of up-to-date research. Their conclusion is that the negative effects of mobile phone use whilst driving are caused by both physical and cognitive distraction. Although physical distraction can be reduced through the use of such aids as handsfree phones and speed dialling, cognitive distraction remains the crucial problem. They conclude that handsfree phones do not have significant safety advantages over handheld phones. They also point towards research suggesting that talking on a mobile phone is associated with cognitive distraction that may undermine pedestrian safety.
2. Applied Cognition Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of Utah - David Strayer has published a wealth of research on the impact of using in-car technologies on driving performance and traffic safety. It is well worth a browse of their published articles.
   

Cut-throat Capitalism

Piracy has a romantic history often associated with walking-the-plank, peg-legs and saying Arrrrr a lot - there is even an international talk like a pirate day on the 19th of September each year. However, modern piracy in Somalia is a deadly game and nothing like the stereotype. Nevertheless, Wired Magazine has had some fun with this and brings us Cut-throat Capitalism in which you are a pirate commander staked with $50,000 from local tribal leaders and other investors, and your job is to guide your pirate crew through raids in and around the Gulf of Aden, attack and capture a ship, and successfully negotiate a ransom.

The game is addictive and highly strategic. Initially I kept alienating my crew by being nice in my negotiations, so they eventually deposed me as captain. Then when I was too tough on my hostages, the Navy was called in. Eventually, I was successful in negotiating a $3 million ransom.

Piracy off the Somalian coast is seen as a business by those who conduct it, and as such it can be analysed by economists (who, in general, love to think that the world revolves on an economic axis). Wired has taken a look at the economics of piracy and found that the typical payoff for piracy in Somalia today is 100 times what it was in 2005. One of the reasons why it is flourishing today is because it exploits the incentives that drive international maritime trade. Shippers, insurance companies, private security contractors, and national navies stand to lose less by tolerating it rather than attempting to stop it - insurance covers the ransom, ships and goods are not lost and no one dies. The pirates know that they can keep escalating the situation to see just how much the "market" can bear. The negotiation process also involves risk/reward calculations.

Turbulent Townsville

Sometimes, the weather just doesn't work in your favour. Whether its raining out weekend sport or a BBQ, bringing an early end to the snow season, or simply melting the polar caps, raising sea levels and displacing millions of people, it can often be a minor inconvenience.

But on other occassions, it can be truly annoying.

I am currently sitting in the airport lounge in Townsville, North Queensland, awaiting my extremely delayed flight and hoping beyond hope that I don't have to stay here any longer. Townsville is a town that is built around James Cook University, the Army and the North Queensland Cowboys Rugby League team. However, univerisity hasn't gone back, much of the Australian Army is deployed overseas, and its not rugby league season yet, so suffice to say, there is not alot to do. Although, I'm not sure whether I would be tempted by that combination of attractions in any case...

No, to be fair, Townsville has its fair sure of beautiful attractions and lovely people. I'm just grumpy - that grumpiness that only airports can bring out of you!

Northern Australia is currently in the grip of cyclonic weather conditions. Cyclone Nelson has cut off much of the north by road, and caused massive flooding. This is a very strange thing to see coming from Sydney, which like much of the rest of the country, is drought-striken and in a water crisis.

So for my flight to be delayed is not surprising. However, for my flight to be delayed because the plane is late from Sydney because of Sydney storms, whilst it is perfectly clear outside here in Townsville, is rather infuriating! (Marc - I'm adding this 6 hours after we were supposed to leave, and we're still here. Each hour they delay the departure time by an hour.)

OK, time to stop complaining, and make something sciencey out of all this. One of the "features" of the trip up, and considering the weather conditions probably the trip back, was turbulence. Turbulence is air movement that cannot normally be seen and whilst many people enjoy this aspect of flying, I struggle with it!

There are a number of ways that turbulence can come about:

Thermals - Air rises when it is heated by the sun, and cold air sinks. So if one mass of air heats up, this can cause air flow causing turbulence.

Jet streams - At high altitudes, there are fast air currents. These can shift, causing a disturbance in the nearby air.

Mountains - Air passes over mountains and causes turbulence as it flows above the air on the other side.

Wake turbulence - If you are flying near the ground, a passing plane or helicopter can set up small, chaotic air currents.

Microbursts - A storm can cause a strong downdraft close to the ground.

The danger with turbulence is that it cannot always be predicted. The cockpit suffers least from turbulence, whilst the rear of the plane cops most of the disturbance. You don't need clouds for turbulence, however I usually notice it most when flying through them. On the way up, the pilot tried to stay below the clouds that were causing the turbulence. However, after a period of time, the clouds got lower and lower, and the plane couldn't continue to stay below them. However, the pilot said we were too heavy to fly above them - so we flew in the clouds for the best part of the flight, and it was a bumpy ride!

Aircraft radars can't detect turbulence. Turbulence is the leading cause of in-flight injuries, so remember to keep those seat-belts done up! It can range from very mild, to the extremely dangerous (but rather unlikely) case of the plane being totally out of control with massive changes in altitude. Between 1981 and 1997, there were 342 reports of turbulence affecting major air carriers. Three passengers died, two of which were because they were not wearing seat belts. 80 suffered serious injuries, 73 of these were also not wearing their seat belts.

One example of turbulence was a flight from Singapore to Sydney with 236 passengers on board, as well as and 16 crew. The airplane encountered turbulence over central Australia when it hit an air pocket and dropped 100 m. Nine passengers, including one pregnant woman, and three crew members suffered neck, back and hip injuries, with one of the passengers requiring surgery. They were all not wearing seat belts.

I'll get this out on the podcast soon, assuming I get back..... (mp3 here)

For more info and some examples of turbulence incidents, see: Civil Aviation Safety Authority

For a fluid dynamics explanation, see here.

I'm so bored

What do you do when you’re bored? Do you send emails to friends? Do you play cricket in the hallways of your work place? Do you Photoshop pictures of David Hasselhoff? Or do you obsessively clean your house – not that I have done any of these things. Everyone has different ways of coping with boredom. And although most of us think that boredom is a bad thing, there is some support to the notion that boredom is a naturally occurring emotion, and far from being suppressed, it should be embraced.

Dr Richard Ralley, a psychology lecturer from Edge Hill College in Ormskirk, Lancashire, has embarked on a scientific study of boredom, hoping to find a scientific benefit for the emotion.

“Boredom can be a good thing,” he said to the Guardian newspaper, “Boredom is natural, so let's deal with it.”

“In psychology we think of emotions as being functional. Fear, anger and jealousy all serve a purpose but they're painted in a bad light even though they exist for a reason. It’s the same with boredom, which also has a bad name. We get bored because we get fed up when we have nothing to do and feel the need to be productive. We feel bad when we’re not productive and that’s what boredom is associated with.”

His theory is that when there is nothing to do, when we are not being subjectively productive, we can relax in preparation for the next time there is something important to do.

He stated that: “Boredom is something, it’s not just switching off. It can be useful. When there’s nothing rewarding going on we conserve energy, so that when we want to reengage we can. There's a balance between doing something that’s rewarding and doing something that’s rewarding but not being happy about doing it.”

This has relevance for how we deal with bored kids – do we try to occupy their time, or do we allow them to be bored and figure out what to do themselves? Will allowing them to be bored ultimately be good for them?

In a more serious aspect to the emotion, boredom can also occur as a symptom of clinical depression. It may also lead to impulsive, possibly excessive, actions that serve little purpose. For example, studies in behavioural finance have shown that stock traders with nothing to do can start “overtrading” – that is, buying or selling for no good reason.

Which brings us to that strange biological phenomenon of the yawn. We all do it, especially if we are bored or tired. But does it actually do anything? There is a now discredited theory that it is caused by an excess of carbon dioxide and lack of oxygen in the blood. Another hypothesis is that yawning is used for the regulation of body temperature, or that it is caused by neurotransmitters in the brain. However these theories do little to explain why we yawn when we are bored. But for whatever reason we do it, it seems that yawning may be a herd instinct – we’ve all seen people yawn sympathetically with each other. One theory suggests that yawning synchronises mood behaviour among animals – such as wolves howling at the moon. It signals tiredness to other members of the group so that sleeping patterns and periods of activity can be synchronised.

So if you’re game, try yawning in front of your boss and see if you can make him/her tired.

Listen to this show here