JOURNAL | PROFILE | FRIENDS | MANIFESTO FOR 40 | ABOUT THE SITE | CONTACT
Thursday 20 November 2008
I feel like I've been reading No Logo for ages, and I'm only at page 124 of 446. It's not that it's particularly hard going, or that I'm disagreeing with it all (though equally, I'm not buying her arguments 100%). The problem is that I'm too easily diverted - Klein's sources chime so many chords with me that I'm constantly going off to check them. She quoted from Susan Sontag's Notes on Camp, for instance, which sent me off rereading Sontag for the first time in about 10 years. I can see a few of her books being added to my next Amazon order.
I'm giving up on Channel 4's The Truth About Gay Sex - It's all a bit woefully predictable. And I can't help but think that all the people who make use of "The Jewel in the Crown of London's cottages" are probably a little annoyed that it's been identified as such on national television.
The Guardian magazine on Saturday contained a couple of items I thought I'd share.
The first is an interview with Stockard Channing by Zoe Williams, which shows the gifted and challenging actor as intelligent, honest, and down-to-earth. All refreshing qualities in a Hollywood personality.
The second is a fairly lightweight analysis of the 24 phenomenon by Charlie Porter. It seems clear that 24 has had a greater impact in Charlie's circle than in mine, but nevertheless the comparisons with Twin Peaks do hold some water.
Today's Metro reported that Tim Henman is stripping off as part of a new campaign designed indirectly to promote young people taking up tennis and directly to promote sales of a well-known washing powder. Am I the only one who doesn't quite see the connection between nudity and professional tennis? The Guardian also reports it but without the salacious photos (note - 'salacious' is used in this context to mean 'not salacious at all').
Well, it's been relatively chilled and rested, which is nice.
Things you don't hear (or at least I never have) in London:
In reply to a request for a half of lager, a barman's response to the man beside me was, "Would that be in a lady's glass?"
My horribly-delayed train journey back into London was made slightly more entertaining by the row with the man sitting opposite me reading Life newspaper. I'll generally respect someone arguing with me, even if I don't agree with their argument, but I tend to regard someone who won't even condemn people who blow up clinics and assassinate doctors as pretty fair game.
I should point out that I was not the one who started the argument.
But I was more than happy to finsh it :-)
UPDATE - I should make it clear that the paper he was reading was the 'pro-life' publication Life, not Life Magazine - Barnaby's just mentioned that the limited description above might be confusing.
The news of the horrific school shooting in Germany prompted a predictable response on Metafilter, which was to take all of three comments to commence a retreading of The Standard MeFi Discussion on Gun Control(tm). In among the woefully predictable bickering off the back of a tragedy, I thought the following stood out. Any thoughts, anyone?
"Here is an alternative perspective:
1. If there were zero guns there could not be gun related crime.
2. If there were precious few guns, then they'd be too difficult or expensive to obtain that there would be practically no gun related crime.
3. If guns were available but not ubiquitous then mostly criminals would have them and a few law abiding citizens. Gun related crime would be relatively high because of the proportion of guns owned by criminals
4. If society was saturated with guns, then nearly everyone including children either has one or has access to one. But, gun related crime is about the same as in #3 with only the added cases of kids/postal workers going crazy.
Right now the US is in condition #4. The rhetorical argument "if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns" refers to the shift from condition #4 to condition #3. To make a difference we need to go at least back to condition #2 and the only way to do that is to legislate at the source: gun manufacturers. Shut them down, or limit them to a certain "precious few", tax them heavily or legislate a minimum price per gun the manufacturer has to charge, then cut gun importing completely. Then wait a couple decades for the existing guns to gradually become lost or inoperable and maybe, just maybe we might see a substantive decrease in gun violence.
Also, it wouldn't hurt to stop making toys that teach kids guns are fun and exciting and saturating the media with depictions of guns being used to solve problems. But hey, I'd settle for condition #2"
Well considering it was so miserable earlier, the sky above London this evening was so beautiful I wished I had my camera with me.
I'm off out of town for some family-visiting first thing in the morning, so I'll be posting over the weekend in either chilled and rested mode, or tense and irritable mode - with my family, it could go either way....
Courtesy of the protracted dryish spell, it's been a while since I've emerged in the morning in the rain, and this morning, it's *raining*. I quite like rain in a "it's nice sometimes to stand outside and deliberately get soaked to the skin" way, but when it's more like the "I now have to sit in wet trousers until I dry out" model, I'll be honest and say that I'm not so keen....
I've been relearning about the Peters Projection World Map, which makes for an interesting study. The 'standard' world map, that we're all familiar with (properly referred to as the Mercator map) was developed in the 16th Century, and has formed the basis of most people's understanding of the 'shape' of the world ever since. It suffers, as must all maps including Peters', from the inability accurately to reflect a curved surface on a flat plane, and certain physical phenomena give it real trouble, such as the way things are distorted the further away from the equator they are.
The Peters projection bases itself on area, and demonstrates the inherently Euro-centric view of the Mercator map. It's been seized upon by campaigners for social equality, because it makes clearly visible some of the facts about our world that the traditional view hides, like the relative sizes of the countries in the world, especially those in the Third World.
It's caused quite a bit of controversy since it was introduced in 1973, but among the things Peters recognised that I can't help but agree with, is that maps are inherently political, and that all the claims mapmakers make for their science only representing the facts are subject to some scrutiny. You couldn't use a Peters map to navigate by, but you could use it at least to show that the equator is actually in the middle of the map....
The IE6 glitch seems to have been resolved. Let me know if any others come to light. In the meantime, I'll try to work out why the application of the 'float' attribute appears to be less reliable in IE6 than in IE5....
Apologies to anyone viewing this page in Internet Explorer 6 - Dave's pointed out that what can probably best be described as 'weird shit' is going on because of the new stylesheet. I don't have time to sort it out right now, but I'll try and do so as soon as possible.
I've just watched the launch of the rocket taking the 'Internet Millionaire' Mark Shuttleworth into space as only the second space tourist. It cost him fourteen million pounds for the priviledge, apparently.
Much as I'd love to go into go into space, even if I could afford it, I'm not sure I'd spend that kind of money on the trip.
Topically, given my last posting, I've been out with ChrisR for beer, food, and a general putting the world to rights, taking in along the way the practical application of an ethical standard to running a business.
Also along the way, he mentioned that a regular reader of this site had told him that he got a sense from here that I was quite 'reserved' (you know who you are....). For some reason that I obviously can't fathom, Chris had found this amusing.
By way of extension to that, we pondered what the opposite of 'reserved' was, and as we were sitting in a restaurant, the best that came to me was 'available'. We both laughed at that, but you probably had to be there.
On other fronts, I'm uploading a few changes and additions here:
Yet more sites linked on the People page.
A new phrase in Words.
And a changed stylesheet to get rid of the infamous wrapping at the bottom of the left hand boxes. I know I said I'd give it a week, but the view seemed fairly unanimous, and it was the one thing I didn't like so much about the layout myself. I'm planning on adding some new boxes over there anyway in the not-too-distant future. The non-journal pages are already changed, and I'll do the journal templates in the next few minutes.
Rambling and pondering (you've been warned):
Chris and Derek at the warm company note the following in their what we believe page: “We believe in abandoning the traditional notions of clients, suppliers and staff.”
Some words I wrote for an equivalent page are that we will “Treat everyone with whom we have a working relationship; clients, suppliers, and employees, with the respect we would like to receive ourselves” with some details provided later for each of the three.
Both of these reflect that there’s a traditional division in business between the people you work for (clients/customers), people who provide you with things (suppliers) and people who work for you (employees).
This traditional division is challenged by what is an unfortunate ‘buzz-speak’ usage that crept in during the caring sharing 90s which tried to replace this distinction by calling all of these groups ‘partners’.
Insofar as the word ‘partner’ suggests a mutually-beneficial relationship, it’s actually a pretty good catch-all (assuming that those relationships are run with a view to them actually being mutually beneficial).
The question I’m pondering is whether the terminology matters. I’ve been an employer and an employee, a client and a supplier, and generally-speaking, what I remember is whether or not my relationship with the other half of each such partnership was a good one or a bad one. On top of which, it seems to me that they all inform each other – I had a bad employer once, and if I subsequently needed a supplier in their industry, I wouldn’t use them. Likewise, I wouldn’t work for a company that had treated me badly as a client or supplier.
We use the words as labels because we think we know their meaning, but in actual fact, the relationships are really all that matter. Whether you’re in the theoretically stronger position, (customer, employer) or not, you still have the ability to deal honourably with each other, to work with respect and honesty, and to ‘do as you would be done by’.
Yet still, there seem to be many, in all of those relationships, who don’t act in this way. Stories of companies treating their workforce badly, or suppliers dealing with their clients shabbily are legion, no matter the number of ‘good employment practice’ and ‘service delivery’ workshops and courses attended. Which is bad enough when you deal with this on the level of ‘company’, but what is a company but a lot of people? It’s not the companies that do bad things to people, it’s people doing them, and that’s even more depressing.
My model, for what it’s worth, is to try and treat everyone I interact with, both personally and professionally, as if they were a friend, and apply the same standards of openness and honesty to them as I would to the people I cherish most in the world. It would be nice to think I get the same back, but I’m not that stupid.
So does the terminology matter? Yes and no. No in that, by the standards of behaviour involved, they should all be viewed in the same way, but yes, because the world isn’t ready to handle such communality just yet.
Give it time though.
If everybody lived like me, we'd need 2.6 planets. I'm deeply ashamed.
I meant to post this for Earth Day, and like a moron, forgot. Check out your own Ecological Footprint on the Earth.
[Via Metafilter, where almost everyone would need even more planets, scarily....]
According to Channel 4's "How Gay Are You?" quiz, I'm 20% gay ("Are you sure anyone even spots that you're not straight?"), which is less gay than three allegedly straight men I work with.
In other news, according to the same channel's Snob Status quiz, I'm only 25% snob, which is up to 64% less snob than at least one of those same people.
So go on then - your turn.
Bit of a scare yesterday when a glass of water was spilled over the laptop keyboard while I was meeting a client. I've been drying it out overnight, and apart from a bit of glitchiness around the cursor keys, things seem to be back to normal. So a few things I was going to do around here didn't get done - maybe tonight after I've met up with ChrisR
What is it with St George's Day this year? I've never seen so much attention paid to it. The bar downstairs from the office even has a St George's Day menu for today, and it's far from the only one. Even Google has gone for a themed logo....
A conversation that Barnaby and I have occasionally had is whether Christopher Price, the presenter of Liquid News on BBC Choice can manage to get more extravagantly camp than he has been to date. He certainly won't now, as he was found dead at his home yesterday.
Weh-Hey!!!!
This is my first posting as part of Broadband Britain (at home). Yes, after the entire Broadband Saga(tm) ran its course - culminating in BT sending me an email on Friday just confirming once and for all that I actually can get ADSL, here I am, on-line, all-the-time, and able to use my phone too. All for the princely sum of around £24 a month.
I know it's early days, but I'm going to say that I've been very impressed with the straightforwardness of the Pipex process.
"It seems to me that education in this country has traditionally been about educating a select few, and training the rest to follow orders."
I've been to see what the ticket called "An Audience With Tony Benn", and which the man himself called "A Political Meeting" - he's on a mission to involve people in politics again, and this was by way of being an open forum. The first half was his outline of the different kinds of power at work in the world today, and some of his views on the ways in which we're affected by them, then he took questions from the audience.
I've always admired a great deal of what he's stood for over the years, and if anything, he only gets more admirable with age. His mind is sharp, his observations incisive, and uniquely among politicians I've seen in action, he's willing to admit that decisions in which he was involved when in government were wrong, and even shameful.
A few years ago, I had the priviledge of discussing the situation in Iraq with him while preparing a TV programme, and his courtesy in helping me past the gaps in my knowledge, and his willingness not only to tell me what he thought, but also why, stood in marked contrast to many other politicians I've encountered over the years. My admiration for him continues to grow.
At the trivial end of the scale, celeb-spotting in the audience produced two Pet Shop Boys sitting directly in front of us, and Neil and Christine Hamilton (yuck). Ingrid, one of the friends I went with, visited the ladies at the end of the evening, and Mrs Hamilton was in there too. Someone asked her if they were there to get ideas for their own roadshow, and Mrs Hamilton apparently replied "Yes, but I doubt we'd pack the Old Vic." I suspect she's right.
New book review, of a West Wing episode guide, is up in Opinion. Gonna try and get at least another comic one up later today too.
Okay, I'm throwing it open to the floor:
Ian has noted that he'd rather the width of the content area on these pages be narrower to ease reading. I actually put the font size up a pixel about a week ago just to ease it from one point of view, but Ian's reasons are different, and are given in his comments on this posting.
So: let's canvass opinion - What does everyone think on the subject of my column width? Speak via the comments facility, and if a majority feel that narrower columns will enhance their abilty to digest my words of wisdom, then I'll see what I can do.
I know that some people only stop by every few days, so I'll review the score in a week's time. Please give an opinion one way or the other, even if you don't regularly comment.
Explorer Thor Heyerdahl dies - He was one of those people who everyone seemed to have heard of, but no one really knew much about. People tend to have heard of the Kon-Tiki, but that's about it. I remember getting a sketchy idea about him from school, and mostly thinking "What a cool name!". He undertook many other expeditions to demonstrate his theories of human population movements, which while not always accepted by the acedemic community, were clearly passionately believed-in by Heyerdahl himself.
Courtesy of the 3-disc box set of Season 1 (First half), I've been discovering what I was missing in the early days of The West Wing, and I'm forced to admit to being impressed. I knew from seeing later episodes (specifically the first few from Season 2) that it was a sharp bit of work, but the thing that took me aback was how assured it was from Minute 1 of Episode 1. It's structured superbly, with some beautiful performances (Moira Kelly is a bit annoying, but apart from that, the regulars are all brilliant). Most impressive of all is that of the 11 episodes I've watched in the last couple of weeks, Aaron Sorkin wrote or co-wrote everything. Okay, so there's a tendency towards patriarchy and odd lines of dialogue (especially the President's) seem a little mannered, but otherwise, you've got to admire the talent of a man who can come up with the whole series then turn out that much quality in the standard US episode-in-eight-days model. And given the context, the patriarchy is probably just realism....
I've deleted two comments from my posting yesterday about collaborative working by people hiding their identities . (For reference, one of them agreed with me, one seemed to be taking it personally.) I don't like playing the censor, but I've decided that this is my space, and I'll make the rules. I'm happy for the comments facility to provide a forum for further discussion of the odd bits and pieces that make it out of my head - that's why it's there. But every opinion I post, I'm confident enough in to put my name to, and I don't see why I should enter into debate with people unwilling to do the same.
I don't think it's an unfair rule to apply, and I'd never want it to prevent people taking part in what I've often found to be interesting discussions that I would never otherwise have had. Please keep offering me that stimulus, but put your name to your comments, or my new standard policy will be to delete them.
My house: My rules.
I watched a lot of last night's post-budget analysis, and a chunk more this morning, and the major thing that struck me is how pathetically whiny some people are (anyone expecting in-depth economic commentary is at the wrong blog). One man said "I'm very surprised and disappointed by Labour." WHY? Broadly, the people who lose are those who can afford to give a little more back, and those who win are the people who can't, plus everyone, via an improved NHS. To me, that sounds exactly what I'd hope to get from a government that still claims at some level to have a solcialist ethic. In fact, it's exactly what I'd demand from them.
The thing that I find most annoying is the way that Gordon Brown, hamstrung by those stupid "Won't raise income tax" pledges before the last election, is forced to use methods like a rise in National Insurance rates, which just leaves him open to all this whinging, carping crap about 'increasing tax by the back door'. Of course that's what he's done, because his own party has made it impossible for him to do otherwise.
Since reading ChrisR's posting about a collaborative, rather than combative, web industry, I've been thinking a great deal about how that fits into my wider views on the 'right' ways of doing business (see here and postings past for more on that subject). Though I like a lot of what Chris says, I have a slightly different view on its application, I think.
Collaboration seems, on the face of it, to be basically anti-business, because business tends to be viewed as a battle for a share of a specific market. But Chris's model looks like it should work in this specific market, because the available business falls into so many definable categories: Just design, just programming, just content insertion, just online brand development, just consultancy, just content management, just creative direction, just countless other less well-defined components, and of course any individual project is likely to involve some combination of them, up to 'just' all of them.
Where things have gone wrong for many agencies who tried to be all things to all people is that there isn't one pool of people who can do all of these things to a sufficiently high standard. So to cover all the eventualities, they ended up employing a number of people who can do each, or a few, who may then have spent much of their time either underutilised (cost in money) or pushed into doing other things by necessity (cost in time), and all the while, those agencies had to house all these people (cost in money) and provide the administrative and logistical support required (cost in money and time). So all of these accumulated costs had to be passed on, and at the same time as the market was undergoing a contraction, they were trying to sell work at ever-increasing prices. This is obviously news to no one, because we've all lived through it, but it's worth restating. Because glaringly obvious as the flaws in this model are now, enough people were oblivious to them at the time to cause many well-respected agencies to fold or contract, or move out of their glamorous premises in Docklands to an industrial estate in Kent (that's meant to be a generic example, by the way, if a specific agency made that exact move, it's a coincidence). How can this be so self-evident now, and not have been then?
Generally, I'd tend to suspect the twin monsters of ego and pride. Ego expressed in the need to create monuments to the egoists in the form of huge businesses capable of doing anything and everything for their clients, supported by a prideful unwillingness to admit that any course was wrong. I'm not pointing specific fingers here, because I could name at least five companies this description applies to that people I know have worked in. Also generally-speaking, smaller companies with specific niches have tended to weather the storm better, except where entire technologies have suddenly fallen victim to wider politics, such as the ColdFusion houses suddenly working with a cancelled technology.
So to what Chris calls "the real web industry". Smaller specialist agencies or individuals who don't feel the need to be all things to all people, but who do the things they do because they want to do them properly, working alongside others with complementary specialities. The benefits of this model seem as self-evident as the dangers of the former, but this way has its cost too. It means putting aside ambitions of grand scope and huge dividends and embracing smaller, more realistic goals. It means giving up pride in the creation of a great edifice, at least in the short term, and rediscovering pride in a single task, done to the very best of one's ability. And it means letting go of the other pride, the one that stands in the way of saying "I can't do this alone".
It all makes sense to me - I'd rather our company had this attitude than the other, because that other way leads to enterprises that collapse under their own weight. It keeps the likely overall size of a company to a sensible, manageable number, rather than getting to be monolithic and unwieldy. (Speaking for myself, I'd rather never again be in a company of more than about 50-60 people, a size where it's possible at least to know who everyone is.) I'd rather be one supplier among several to my clients and know that they come to me for the things I can give them best, than muddle through trying to pull together solutions that I'm not confident in, just because we have to sell enough to fund exponential growth. One of our clients, who works in exactly this way, has another supplier they go to for the production of CD ROMs, because that's one of their core activities, but business I hope never to try to get into. Meanwhile they come to us for other things, because they know we'll do them well.
We already have a view that working with partners having access to skills, experience, or knowledge that we don't have is a good thing. Again, this is common sense, and offers significant benefits in several areas, not least of which is cost, but possibly greatest of which is the ability to do what we can, want, and need to do to the very best of our ability. The practical application of this probably needs some extension so that we identify the people who not only can do what we can't, but also share our view of the world closely enough to offer us benefits of amity, mutual understanding, and support.
Having seen the results of the old model, I know where I'd rather be.
Hair today.....
I've cropped my hair (yes, what little of it there is - har har) as short as I've ever had it. The reason for doing so may sound odd, but it's because I'm thinking of shaving it off completely, and I'm trying to decide if I like the shape of my head....
"The story so far...
Like all good fairy tale heroines, Princess Snow White was brought up by a single parent. What happened to Snow White's mother is best left to those who gossip and tittle tattle...but between you and me she was never quite the same after she slipped on a vol-au-vent whilst performing her party piece at the King's birthday party. It was a long time before the King held one of his famous balls again."
Let's see:
Dodgy double entendres? Yes.
Dubious racial stereotypes? Yes.
Men dressed up as women? Yes.
Badly-performed song and dance routines? Yes.
In-jokes to render the whole thing unintelligible? Yes.
People forgetting their lines and being audibly prompted, sometimes from the audience? Yes.
Someone in the corner holding up 'Boo' and 'Hiss' cards? Yes.
I'm afraid it's true. As the evidence clearly demonstrates, I've inexplicably been to see a panto. In April.
Just. Don't. Ask.
We're all very happy, because Octavia, Dave's partner, has got herself a really good new job that she really wanted. Which is entirely deserved. Nice one, Ms Holmes.
Apparently, the UK is "joint favourite for Eurovision", alongside hosts Estonia - while the competition includes a gay transvestite group from Slovenia.
The competition is on 25th May this year, by the way.
I see on the news this morning that an increasing number of couples visiting Relate to discuss the reasons for the breakdown in their relationship are citing one or other partner spending too much time on the internet.
This could be bad news - as a recently single man with an impending permanent net connection (switch-on sometime in the next few days - We-Hay!), I may never find true love again. *Sob*
Bugger of a night. I was out for a drink with some friends, when a woman from a nearby table came over and said "I think the woman who just left stole something out of your bag" to one of my mates. It turned out that this woman sitting behind us had indeed half-inched a wallet from the bag where it was on the floor by the chair. She'd made off before anyone could get things together enough to give chase, and of course, the bar's CCTV system wasn't working. The one good thing about it was that the woman who'd alerted us could give a good description of the thief, and the police came very promptly to take all the details and get the description, but even so, it was so blatant it was extremely disturbing.
This woman had clearly positioned herself very carefully, and had taken time to select the right moment to do the deed. It's amazing how brazen people can be, but it's also amazing what people can get away with as a result of being brazen....
I'm waiting for a book from Amazon, Open Secret, by David Ehrenstein, and while doing some pre-order research, I came across this page of correspondance concerning its publication and the libels it was reputed to contain about one Mr Thomas Cruise Mapother IV.
I smiled.
The effort to get the Opinion section going again starts here, with a review of a teeny-tiny graphic novel called Dumped - check it out (the review that is. Then the comic....)
Been meaning to mention that I've revised the People lists a little to reflect some changes in reading habits. Specifically, I've taken a couple of people of the 'other weblogs' list, either because they've stopped blogging or because I've stopped reading them for one reason or another, and I've added a couple of recent additions to my regular reading. Check them out.
I did my annual watching of the Marathon thing this morning - as I remarked last year, I do love the way it brings out the community in my neck of the woods, as all the people come out to cheer on the runners. As noted yesterday, I was watching out for Barnaby and Matt today, and managed to see them more or less bang on when they were expecting to pass my way.
Some photos follow - Barnaby and Matt are featured in the first one - the others are random participants, and this one doesn't fit in the grid.
I took yesterday off, with a view to making a long weekend and doing some stuff around the flat, though inevitably, I found myself doing work-related stuff for half the day.....
Still, coincidentally, the kit for my now-only-days-away Broadband activation arrived from Pipex, so the timing was pretty good. The Broadband Saga with BT took a few more weird turns during the week, as after I'd had the conversation about cancelling my order with them, I subsequently received their "Good news!" email to tell me that their line testing had indicated that my line was fine for Broadband, and that my activation would now proceed - when I eventually got one of their 'order management' people on the phone, he told me that my order hadn't been cancelled after all, even though, (yes, you got it in one) my postcode was being rejected...... I did finally subsequently receive a cancellation confirmation email, but what a carry-on this has all been.
Anyway, today I'm off to the wilds of Berkshire to see some friends for the day, then tomorrow I'll be doing my duty watching for Barnaby and Matt and cheering on them and the rest of the London Marathon runners.
Time Travel....sort of....in a way....oh, it's too complicated to explain - see for yourself
[Via Metafilter]
At the suggestion of various people, I watched last night's repeated episode of Teachers, as it apparently featured an amusing plot in which the homophobic PE teacher was forced to confront the possibility of his own possible homosexuality when his friends play up his own uncertainty. Potentially funny, if hardly original, I thought.
What I actually saw was far creepier. In fact, the character in question had no inherent uncertainty about his orientation at all, but just seemed generally weak-minded and easily influenced. So what was actually happening was a bunch of people preying on the weakness of their so-called 'friend'.
Entertainment takes many forms, I suppose.
As Spring is definitely seeming to be in the air, I thought I'd just share some daffodils. I know they're a bit cheesy, but I do think they brighten the place up.
Right - there's the new version live. I've tested it pretty extensively, and it even works on a Mac (a relatively recent model running IE5.5Mac anyway), though in Macworld the random image script seems only to change the image on refreshing, not on moving from page to page, which is kind-of weird. If you happen across any other glitches, please let me know.
The aim is to gain structure without losing a sense of clean and open - which I think it achieves, anyway. I'll probably tweak slightly over the next week or so as I get used to it.
Note that when I say new version, the content hasn't changed in even the smallest degree - what's changed is actually two things, the obvious one, which is the look and feel, the less obvious one is a structural one. All of the various content areas, which covers subnavs and things like the 'what I'm listening to' stuff as well as main page bodies, are now separated out into Server Side Includes, which is a step towards running the site through templates and driving it dynamically. That requires a few more steps along my technical education, so I'll just keep working at that.
Anyway - let me know what you think.
The run-in with BT that I refrerred to last night, by the way, was when I called to cancel my Broadband order with them, as I've now put one in to Pipex. When the woman pulled up my order and I said I wanted to cancel it, she said "It's already cancelled." When I asked why it had been, and why no one had bothered telling me that it had, she explained that it was because my [insert random Three Letter Acronym here] had failed because some of the information was wrong. Once I sent her away to find out what information was in question, she came back and informed me that it's (surprise surprise) my postcode not being recognised. So I explained to her that there must clearly be something wrong with their system, as I wouldn't have gone through the whole ordering process with her colleague last week if she hadn't first checked and told me that I could get the thing. To which her reply was "Well why does it matter if you're cancelling it anyway?"....
Happy Birthday To....this blog. Today is my first Blogaversary, and if there's anyone more surprised than I that I've reached this point, then speak up now.
In the last year, I've blogged from London, Teesside, Kilmarnock, Amsterdam and San Francisco - not such a great record, but it's been one of my less-well-travelled years. From a humble beginning on Blogger to a domain of its own and a more well-rounded version built with Movable Type, it's gone through four major 'looks', including the basic Blogger Template, the red and black 'right offset boxes' look, the red and white 'in your face with illegible (allegedly) headers' look, and the toned-down Scrabble header look used for the last few months. This evening, I'll be taking the design a subtle step on from here, but keeping the Scrabble header, since it excited more attention and positive comment than I would have thought possible when I first had the idea.
In the meantime, I spent a few hours at the weekend rereading the whole journal from scratch. The interesting thing I've noticed in doing this is that generally speaking, I think the tone has remained more or less steady throughout - I thought some change in perspective or style might have occurred over the months, but I don't think it has.
Along the way I selected a few of my favourite postings - they're favourites for a number of reasons; some because they're more profound than most, some because they seem to have engaged with readers, some because they're just quirky, and others because they shed light on me and how I think or feel. If you came to this late, you may find a deeper understanding of where I'm coming from in them - if you read them the first time round, I'd be interested in knowing your views on the way the journal has evolved (or not) over time.
So without further ado, the compilation I like to call: Now That's What I Call More A Way Of Life......
Nostalgia isn't what.... (27/09/01)
Food, Haring, Kylie - all in one post (6/10/01)
World AIDS Day, Link And Think (01/12-01)
The Incident On The Bus (10/12/01)
An Actual Discussion (12/01/02)
PS - I'm well aware that other stuff on here (like the Opinion section) has been sorely neglected recently - this will be changing shortly.
Cool evening - I walked along the river from Tate Modern to Butler's Wharf in the evening sunshine, which was fab. I took some pictures along the way that I'll try and get sorted into a displayable manner.
Met Sarah for drinks and food for the first time in ages, and had a really nice time. We talked about all sorts of stuff from the irritation of certain utility providers (I had another mad run-in with BT today) to just generally catching up on our respective news. It's daft that we live so close together and don't see each other more often. I think we've both decided that this needs attention.
I've been forgetting to mention that I'm playing the Pet Shop Boys new album Release a lot at the moment. It's a real evolution for them, managing to sound undeniably Pet Shop, but adding a degree of lyricism and poetry that had generally been missing previously. Someone who's heard it tell me - The Night I Fell In Love is about what it sounds like, isn't it? Or am I just reading way too much into it?
I've had an almost totally offline weekend, apart from a quick delve into the archives, which was illuminating.
Barnaby's fundraiser on Friday was most enjoyable - caught up with a few people I hadn't seen for ages, and made arrangements to see a few of them in slightly quieter mode sometime soon.
Apart from that, I was planning on spending some quiet catch-up time with some friends, which I managed to do, incorporating along the way a checking-out of the properties available at the Greenwich Millennium Village, which is a pretty impressive development, all told.
News-wise, I've been surprised by the number of people queuing for so long to see the Queen Mother's coffin - I could almost see the point if it was the person herself on show, but just a flag-draped coffin seems very little return for the time and energy spent. Listening to people being interviewed while and after queuing, there seems to be a general sense of taking part in a historical event.
Apart from that, the only news I've really been aware of is the continuing Israeli assault on Palesinian settlements. Nice to see Bush and Blair, 'The Axis of Mediocrity' taking a moment to slap Israel's wrists before moving on to the real business of going to war with Iraq.
All very grim.
UPDATED - there was a problem with the link in the posting below, but it's corrected now.
I haven't needed to for a number of years, but just in case you were wondering....
Since Chris moved Corporate Anthems to their new home on ZDNet, interest in them is higher than ever, resulting in coverage on CNN and a Front Page link on the BBC News site. He's also being feted for a guest slot on a TV programme which shall remain namesless, but which is presented by some very well-known people. Entertainingly, the KPMG anthem - you remember ; Our Vision Of Global Strategy, is proving popular, giving lots more people opportunities to link to them.
Barnaby and Matt, who we both used to work with, are taking part in the London Marathon next weekend, and they're having a fund-raidsing bash tonight, which as well as being a good opportunity to help him raise his sponsorship money, I'm hoping will give me a chance to catch up with some people I haven't seen for a while. They're on those 'Thou Shalt Raise A Certain Amount Of Money' places in the run, and they're running for SPARKS. If anyone would like to sponsor them, let me know, and I'll pass on the message.
Yesterday, to my shock and, I'll be frank, 'incandescant rage', I discovered that after months of the ongoing Broadband Saga, I actually can get broadband at home after all. It turns out that the reason the BT availability checker maintained that I couldn't is that it wasn't recognising my postcode (the one that's on my BT phone bill....) as valid, and of course, none of the various morons I'd dealt with there had ever bothered to check.
So my line will be tested over the next few days, and if it's okay, I should have a permanent connection at home by the middle of the month. Watch this space
Mother blames computer game for son's suicide - Apparently, Sony deliberately made Everquest addictive specifically to snare just such vulnerable types disagnosed with "depression and schizoid personality disorder, symptoms of which include a lack of desire for social relationships, little or no sex drive and a limited range of emotions in social settings".
That would be instead of deliberately making it addictive in order to encourage people to keep playing it, then? While I'd be the first to note that Sony's motives are probably commercial, I'd also be the first to note that they can't really be held responsible for every possible reaction that individuals may have to it. The fact that this guy gave up his job in order to play the game seems at the very least to suggest a set of priorities out of sync with what might judgementally be termed 'normal'....
[Via Metafilter]
Gloriously, the Microsoft/Unisys "Don't use Unix" website I mentioned yesterday, was switched to MS web servers yesterday, and promptly died....
Almost enough to make you think there is a god after all....
John, over at Sore Eyes, seems to have a knack for tracking down the finest links, so I'll take the opportunity of cross-posting a couple of my favourites to give him a plug - he's got very good taste in TV viewing too.
Microsoft and Unisys Shoot Themselves In The Foot
Julie Burchill To Be Subject Of New Play
Also, something I read myself in The Guardian on Saturday is the extract from Michael Moore's now-notorious US bestseller, Stupid White Men that's made me order the book from Amazon forthwith. I know he's been as criticized for it as otherwise, but I'm keen to make my own judgement.