The worst kind of stealing

I was at the house on Saturday last when the doorbell rang. My wife was coming down the stairs and looked at me as if to ask "are you expecting anyone?"

I wasn't.

I opened the door nonetheless.

There at the door was a young woman, in her early twenties at most. She was short and quite slight with dark hair and very dark eyes.

She didn't say a word. Instead she made a slight muffled squeak and handed me a piece of paper and a tiny little pen.

On the paper was a badly photocopied table, all out of line with the edges of the paper. At the top of the page was written something like "certificate of the association of deaf, dumb and mute persons". I can't remember the exact wording.

On the page I could see a whole list of signatures on the left hand side, a postcode beside each in the next column, and then the county name on the next. In the last column, the rightmost column was the contribution made by each of those who signed.

I remember feeling that it would be mean-spirited not to make a contribution so I took the tiny pen and filled in my details. I handed her a 5 euro note, pretty much what everyone else had contributed. She made a little squeak and took back the pen and sheet from me. She turned and walked down the driveway and up the road.

I shut the door, not quite sure what to make of what happened. I felt a bit uneasy about the slightly adhoc nature of the sheet I had just seen.

A couple of minutes later I needed to go somewhere. I can't remember where I was going but nonetheless I was going out. I drove the car up the road and turned left into the main avenue and happened to notice a group of three people standing next to the wall by the kerb. They were peering into a bag and chatting.

There she was, the young woman who had just called to my door minutes previously.

Now I'm not going to comment extensively on what I saw except to say that this young woman and the two people with her were clearly engaged in what you would call "normal conversation".

I am disappointed in myself for not trusting my intuition at my own door. I am even more disappointed that a human being would stoop so low as to profit from those who are truly unfortunate.

Sometimes I don't need to leave the house to be amazed. And saddened.

Hostage crisis

I had one of those very vivid dreams last night. I dreamt I was being held hostage in a shopping centre, stuck sitting on the floor in a big empty room looking up at a skylight above. It was weird. My hands were bound behind my back.

In my dream it was dark and very quiet. I vividly remember looking up at a circular skylight above and seeing occasional shadowy movements of those people keeping me and my fellow hostages locked in that room.

There would be some sounds, then nothing, then suddenly another.

Eventually we were released and it was a real relief. I mean that. I actually felt the sense of relief.

The mind is so powerful.

Ramblings about recent ponderings

It's been a busy start to the year and I haven't had much time to post anything on here.

So what's been happening.

Well I had a minor car accident, one of those freak things that could happen to anyone. It just happened to me. I learned that it's not easier or quicker to resolve when you are a completely innocent party to an accident. Enough about that.

I also learned that driving safety and temperature seem to have an inverse relationship. As it gets colder people seem to abandon the basics of driving safely. I have never seen so many road accidents as I have in recent days around Dublin. "Crazy madness" is what my old Irish Teacher used to say about things like that.

What else? I learned about Emos. I had heard previously about Goths (not the kind that rampaged across Europe in the 2nd century) and Chavs but Emos were new to me. I came across a wonderful podcast talking about the challenges of keeping the goths and chavs from fighting and urinating on cathedrals and so forth. You need to subscribe to the Radio 4 Choice podcast to get access to the cast but it is worth it in my view.

We seem to have escaped the worst of the extreme weather. In fact where the heck is the extreme weather especially the snow and cold. Everyone I spoke with in recent days has been telling me that there is no snow back home where they come from in Europe, be it Italy, France, Sweden and so on. Then on a call with a colleague in the US this week he was telling me that there was no snow in Wisconsin either and that it's pretty weird not to have snow.

Ah well. Looks like Al Gore might have been right after all.

Gotta go. Bed is beckoning and the day is done.

Take care.

Slán.

Has Louis Vuitton turned the world crazy?

I don't know much about bags, especially those really expensive varieties marketed to women who like to shop at expensive boutiques.

Take for example this one. It's made by Balenciaga.

I had never heard of this brand. It seems that you'll easily part with $1000 or more for one of these purses by Balenciaga.

I have heard of bags by Louis Vuitton and know that they sell for premium prices too.

I think loads of celebrities like to be seen with these kinds of high-priced bags, and of course their legions of fans like to follow their fashions by also getting their hands on these same bags.

Of course when you are famous and fabulously wealthy then $1700 spent on a bag is no big deal. If however you are a college student or work in a local department store then that is a bit of a reach.

You have two options in my view. Option 1 is to remind yourself politely and firmly that you don't need this bag and can't afford it anyway.

Option 2 is to save and save and take on a bunch of extra jobs and maybe look for all kinds of extra work. You stop going out, survive on breakfast cereal and then 3 years later you have enough cash for the bag. Of course by then that bag is soooo last year and you'll have to get something else that is really current and happening. Of course in a matter of weeks of buying the bag some fading star will be seen with it and the whole celeb-watching community will shift to following some other brand on some other celebrity's shoulder.

Well it transpires that there is now a third option. Yep, now you can rent a bag.

I can see the point, if you really must be seen with one of these bags.

If however your life does not depend on it then I just can't see the logic of renting a handbag. Clearly there would appear to be a market for this kind of thing, hence the need for a website like this.

Are we really that bad in the western world now? Do we need to be so loved by others for what we possess?

I think it's mad.

MoM on the Toilet, anyone?

Saw this interesting article on a blog at The Telegraph newspaper.

It struck me as interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it describes how the world's first factory to mass produce flexible plastic displays, to essentially mimic paper, will be up and running next year.

So for all those people out there who like to stick the newspaper under their arm, head straight for the toilet while they utter the immortal words "I'm off to the library", this could rock your world. Alternatively if you like to sit out by your pool under the warm sun and cast your eyes over the news, then it might appeal to you too.

Yes, a flexible plastic sheet that is actually a TFT display (that's the technology that's inside LCD displays) that you can hold in your hand like holding a printed copy of Business Week, National Geographic or The National Enquirer even (click here for an interesting article in Slate about The Enquirer).

How interesting is that.

The second thing that is interesting relates to how plastics and electronics are usually manufactured. Now I might have my numbers a bit off here but I'm pretty sure that it takes a huge amount of resources, not least things like water, to make these kinds of devices and then to deal with them when nobody wants them any more.

So for all the nuisance of paper and recycling it, surely it's going to be more costly on every level to produce "plastic paper". Still, it would be cool to have this in your bag and whip it out and have all the cool stuff that you want to read without needing a laptop or needing to squint at a 3.5 inch screen.

While I was writing, I was thinking.. how much longer will the term newspaper be the defining word in the world of news publishing. I wrote earlier The Telegraph Newspaper. It's so much more than a newspaper now, if you are in this world of publishing. Besides the main paper, there's the website, a whole host of blogs, RSS feeds (now that I finally worked out what they are), podcasts and so on.

Will there come a day, or has it come already and I missed it, where people just don't use the term newspaper anymore, except to clarify that they mean the print version of their content.

And finally, MoM is my way of abbreviating "Mystery of Modernity". Maybe I should get some T-Shirts and Coffee Mugs made up.

Car parking chaos

I was at Dundrum Town Centre tonight, as is my wont, and came across this parked in the middle of the House of Fraser store.

Well not this exact car but one exactly like it, two-tone in red and white and with Irish plates.

My son was a bit perplexed about it. I mean what kind of person drives their car into the House of Fraser and then leaves it there?

It's a good question.

On another unrelated point, I've noticed a lot of people pronounce it House of Frasier. So here is my attempt to clarify the situation.

Exhibit 1. House of Fraser - a department store








Exhibit 2. Angus Fraser - a former England Cricket Player












Exhibit 3. Frasier - a fictional character on TV











That's that sorted. Now where did I leave the keys of my Triumph Herald?

That was me looking at you

Went to a Thai restaurant on Saturday night for dinner with my lovely wife. We had a great time. At the table next to us was a party of about 10 people.

There was a guy who was clearly the guest of honour or something like that, probably his birthday if truth be told.

He was being showered with gifts from those around the table.

I was looking at him because I was sure I knew his face from somewhere. I just couldn't place it.

I am one of those people who remembers faces. It's a shame because I tend not to be where crime is taking place. If I was there I'd remember the face. People in court would be saying "isn't it amazing that the artist's impression of the perp is so realistic" and I of course would be thinking "nope. I remember faces".

Anyway I was looking at this guy on and off. I mean not like staring or anything, but a voice in my head kept telling me that I knew this guy and to go ahead and take another look.

The problem is I think the guy in question was wearing glasses when I met him previously, that's if it was him at all, and now the guy at the table was not wearing glasses. I mean it does change the shape of the eyes, the whole glasses on, glasses off thing.

So as we left I didn't bother taking a good look but I was leaning towards deciding that I don't actually know the guy.

So if you were in a Thai restaurant in South Dublin last saturday and noticed an extremely handsome youthful-looking man glancing at you occasionally it could have been me. Or not.

Anyway, off to bed. Bizarre dreams await me.

Are good ideas really spread virally?

I'm not a big fan of the term "viral marketing". Let's be honest, the word viral rarely has any positive connotations.

The idea behind it is simple though and is definitely worthy of investigation. Instead of mass marketing using billboards, TV spots (as they are known) and other print media, advertisements are sent to targeted recipients or hosted at specially selected locations with the clear expectation that word of mouth, or the email equivalent of forwarding, will move the message to like-minded individuals in the first person's social or business network.

Very interesting and if you think about, possibly a more efficient way of getting the message out. People by design tend to align themselves socially and of course work-wise with people who think like them, share similar interests or have something of significance in common.

So the idea is smart by targeting one person in a particular segment, be it demographic, psychographic or any other such category as defined by the marketers, and letting that person introduce the idea to others they know and with whom they share some degree of trust. The person introducing the idea thus advocates the idea and adds their own personal stamp of approval, or at least something which sounds a little like a personal endorsement.

What got me started on this?

Well I was over at Stephen Smart's blog this morning wondering if he had put together his first posting from his new adventure in China. Alas he has not added anything there yet. However I did notice something really smart (no pun intended) at his site. He's introduced this really clever preview from Snap.

To see how it works, just move your mouse over one of the following links. You could try visiting BBC News, or you could have a look at the CHiPs Wiki, or you could see what is happening in the Ironic Times.

And of course here I am telling you about it. Viral or what?

Nearly my word of the week

I was listening to a podcast from the BBC in the car on Thursday. I have one of those nifty FM transmitters that allows me to play my iPod through the car radio. That means I can listen without having to wear headphones or earbuds in the car.

I see lots of people driving with earbuds or headphones. I haven't yet seen anyone driving while playing the flute like this post on Seth Godin's blog but I'll keep looking.

Anyway, on this particular podcast there was a guy on there speaking about his new business venture. He is selling a mobile phone service that allows people to skip past the queues, or lines as the folks in the US say, that are waiting to visit a tourist attraction for example.

Those wishing to use the service send a text to this guy's service and they are sent a time at which they can visit the tourist attraction, pre-authorised to skip past everyone else waiting to get in.

That was simple enough.

During the podcast he was asked a question by Andy Verity from the BBC and in his response he used the word 'sporadity'.

I thought that was an interesting word, a variant perhaps on the word 'sporadic'.

I planned to make it my favourite word this week, following 'incipient'. Alas when I looked it up it does not exist it seems.

I did find Sporadicity though but it doesn't have the fluidity of sporadity.

What a shame.

The enduring appeal of fake poo

Our four year old has just discovered fake dog poo.

He arrived home on wednesday night from his grandparents' house with the "specimen" and proceed to throw it left, right and centre. He was falling about the place laughing, ably followed by his 2 year old brother.

When I was a young chap the old fake poo routine was all the rage, at least for a few days.

It's hard to believe that it still is as 'relevant' as ever.

I understand that he went straight to his playgroup the following morning and told them all about how he had a fake poo and how he was putting it all over the house and that it was just so funny.

He's having a blast with it so long may the joy of poo continue.

You should be able to pick up (yuk) one of these nuggets (ahem) for a euro or two, or a dollar or two depending on where you are from your nearest joke shop. To my knowledge Amazon.com does not sell them, yet.

A wild night

I think this could be the night that the roof is blown off the house. The wind outside is howling with real menace.. and new rattles and whistles are heard from inside the kitchen.

I'm going to go to bed now and hide from the wind.

Another example of the impact of Global Warming?

Did anyone else see the picture of Al Gore, wearing a flame thrower, melting the polar icecaps? It's over at the Onion. Very funny, especially the bit about him leaving his SUV running all day with the a/c on full-blast and him peeing into the gulfstream.

What the heck was the name of that song?

Many years ago in Ireland before the advent of MTV there was a show on TV on Sunday afternoons called MT USA, presented by a chap called Vincent "Fab Vinny" Hanley.

It was great. I remember sitting down each sunday afternoon and being glued to the TV watching ZZ Top swinging their guitars around their belt buckles, Huey Lewis and the News on that island and so on.

One afternoon I remember watching the show and there was a video on. It was about a kid in New York and his uncle was coming around. The uncle had just got out of prison and was coming to see the kid. All I could remember about the song was the chorus:

It's a fine, fine day for a reunion
It's a fine, fine day for coming home
You've done your sitting, you've done hard time
But you ain't gonna sit no more,
they can't keep you there no more
It's a fine fine day

A couple of years later that song came into my head again and I went to the record shop to try and find it. I had no clue who the artist was so I started by searching through some of the big bands of the time.

No joy.

With the advent of the web search I started searching for the damned thing but for years I drew a blank.

Then about a year ago I found it.

The song is sung by a guy called Tony Carey. Yep. I bet you never heard of him. It's not a bad song. For me it reminds me of a time. That's why I wanted to hear it again.

Since then there's a whole host of places to look up info about music. I find it a bit frustrating though if I'm looking for a discography of an artist when I want to find out what album a particular track was on, or what year for example.

What's even more frustrating is when i-Tunes does that for you and downloads rubbish information. That can happen because i-Tunes gets its song information from Gracenote. If you want an interesting read about Gracenote check out the [disputed] Wikipedia entry.

Following a read of that, I've started using an Open Source (yes, I know you are getting tired of me saying that open source is REALLY the answer to all of life's problems) web service that has the most incredible array of information on bands, singles, albums and all that.

The site is called MusicBrainz and it is brilliant.

I've been using it to lookup stuff. It's free and it's pretty much got everything listed there. As the man says, give it a lash.

It's not right but it's okay.

That was the name of the song alright. Whitney Houston was the artist. It was 1999 and that was one of her last ever single releases.

It's all gone horribly wrong for her. When I was a kid she was almost like pop music royalty.

She had an incredible voice, was blessed with good looks and a warm personality and there was just no scandal.

Then it all seemed to go terribly wrong.

There's a terrible story on the BBC News website today with pictures of "bargain hunters" coming out of the sale where she, Houston, is selling off her possessions to pay off some bills. Some of the bargains even included her underwear. Right there, that might be "not right and not okay".

Anyway, selling off her clothes, her possessions, Bobby Brown's awards and so on.

How sad is that?

I have commented before about when the mighty fall, and to be honest I still have no sympathy for people who cheat their way to success.

In this case it's just sad to look at what could have been and how her life and her potential was all thrown away.

It's reminiscent of the life of George Best, one of the greatest footballers of all time yet he threw it all away, his talent and everything else.

It's sad when the wheels fall off.

Peak demand and bandwidth

It's amazing how just this week there was talk in the news about the world's first 1 Terabyte hard disk drive expected to be offered for sale soon by Hitachi.

1 Terabyte.

That's a far cry from the first PC I bought way back in the day. It was a 386SX33 with a 3.5" floppy drive and I think maybe a 20 MB hard disk drive. It looked a bit like this.



At the time it was a speed demon. Now it's just hard to believe that anything productive ever came out of a machine like that. In all truth, given what I used it for, nothing productive actually did come out of it but that's hardly the point.

Anyway, I have distinct memories of the next decent PC I had. It was a Dell something plex with a 486DX66 processor and a whopping 270MB hard drive.

I think I might be giving away my age here :-)

Those were joyous times, with the "breathtaking" performance matched only by the raw excitement that comes from knowing that at any moment the following could happen.


Since about 5 years ago I have lost interest in the whole speed thing when it comes to computers.

Lately while trying to burn DVD movie discs (my own creations people, nothing untoward I assure you) I've rediscovered how important it is to have a really fast and up to date system. Hence the need for me to get that 24" iMac I mentioned previously.

Anyway, despite all the best efforts of users to keep their systems up to date, it never ceases to amaze me how websites seem to really slow down whenever there is a big news item.

It happened during 9/11, I remember it vividly. It happened during the world cup last time around. It happened during the bombings in London. But it's not limited to major news or incidents.

Take the big hoo-ha today surrounding the Apple expo show in the US. I went to the Apple website to see what all the fuss was about and it sure was slow.

I expect there to be loads of interest but it just strikes me as amazing despite the incredible gains in computing power since those early days it's still difficult to manage a sudden surge in demand for information.

They also did something tday that I thought was interesting. Jobs announced at the end of the show that they are dropping the word 'computer' from the company name. From now on it will be known as Apple Inc.

Could they be sending a message to someone that they believe the time has passed for the computer as we know it?

What's up with blogger today?

I keep getting error messages today when I try and open various features on Blogger.

I wonder if it is overloaded with people all rushing to comment on the new iPhone which has just been unveiled by Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Incredibly, I found a live blogging feed, being written on the fly by someone at the Apple Expo.

Is there nothing that can't be found on the internet in pretty-much real-time?

p.s. it could equally be people posting about escalating military action in Iraq and Somalia.

What the heck happened to 2005?

I upgraded to the new Blogger template this evening. It offers drag and drop editing and by all accounts it's a lot better than the old one. I don't have to manually encode links on the page any more.

The main down side.

All of the postings from 2005 don't appear to be available using the list on the right hand side.

I mean it's not like anyone is going to trawl back to 2005 any day soon (well maybe, I do that when I find a blog I like because at the start you tend to find all kinds of interesting stuff about why the person has decided to create a blog).

Anyway, those postings don't seem to be available just now. I'll speak with the people at Blogger to see if there's a way to get them back.

Might as well try to preserve the records.

addendum: I just noticed it got rid of the site counter thing too. I'll have to work out how to get that back. Might be difficult given I don't remember how I got it on the page in the first place.

Are you incipient?

Yeah.

I saw that in a document today and thought "what a word!". Incipient.

I went to dictionary.com and found out that incipient means something that is beginning to exist or appear.

So when you walk in the door at work and your colleagues ask "how are you today" you might say in response "I believe I have an incipient cold."

Or you might be the first to spot some incipient growth on shrubs in your garden, heralding the onset of spring.

You get the idea. Incipient. I'll be sure to force-fit it into a few conversations tomorrow.

Post #203

I seem to have passed the 200 postings mark at some stage recently. Maybe even today.

I just like blogging. It seems every blogger arrives at a point where they face the crunch decision to stop blogging or to keep going.

I'm glad I kept going.

I'm sure that's true for all those other bloggers out there that keep on churning out good stuff to read.

One such blogger, Stephen Smart, is all set to move to China. Good luck Stephen! Why not take a visit over to his blog. It's a good read and very varied.

I'm looking forward to reading about his experience in China.

Australia. I am honoured.

I have a dot on my cluster map from a reader/browser in Australia.



I am chuffed.

Where will this size madness end?

I went to an IMAX cinema many years ago. I can't remember exactly what the film was about, possibly about ice or fish or something like that. I don't even remember why I went but do remember feeling weird while sitting in front of what was really an unfeasibly massive screen.



It really was unfeasible. I had the impression of missing something important every time I tried to follow a fish (or maybe a lump of ice) at the top of the screen, certain that something interesting was possibly happening at the bottom of the screen.



As it turned out nothing interesting was happening anywhere on screen. But that's not the point.



The point is that the eyes can only see so much. It's like this. An LCD screen has a maximum viewing angle, so if you walk too far to the side beyond a certain point you can't see the screen anymore. Likewise stereo sound only works if you are in the cone-shaped sound-field produced by a stereo-sound device, like a hi-fi system.



Surely the eyes have a physical limit, some point beyond which the eyes can't actually see what is going on. The ears have such a limit, ranging somewhere from sounds around 6 or so cycles per second (for deep sounds) to around ten thousand cycles per second for higher pitched sounds. I won't get into a debate about the actual technicalities here and how some people can hear a wider range of sounds. The point is that the ears are in fact physically limited.



So I'm wondering what the limit is on the eyes. Is there a visual field of perception within which we can see stuff, and beyond which although we think we can see perfectly well, in truth we can't.



And at the same time the TV sets of the future just keep getting bigger and bigger. 50 inch plasma on the wall in your home, you might be lucky to be able to sit there and watch everything and hope your eyes can take it all in.



Does anybody know what the limit is and whether these large TVs are approaching the point yet where the screen is impressive but the average person can only actively follow part of it because it's just too big.

Living the dream

Everyone has heard of "The American Dream" or at least heard of the idea behind it. Someone comes to America with nothing, works hard and becomes a big star or owns their own business or becomes president, perish the thought.

As I was queuing in McDonald's tonight (it was a hamburger emergency) I noticed that every one of the staff on the other side of the counter was Chinese.

Amazing.

It got me wondering about whether there is an equivalent in China to the American dream, maybe even called "The Chinese Dream". I wonder if it involves moving to rainy Ireland and taking a job in McDonald's.

Don't get me wrong. McDonald's pays well and it's as good a place as any to work because you'll learn all about serving customers, maintaining high standards of hygiene, efficiency in service operations and all the rest.

I'm just wondering if this is important in "The Chinese Dream" because McDonald's is a well known US company. Experience in a company like this would have currency back in China, as opposed to a Chinese person going to work in Beshoff's for example. Beshoff's is an Irish-owned fish and chips restaurant.

Anyone care to share their own view on this thought of mine?

Fairy lights. The real story.

Call it curiosity. Call it nothing better to do. But I went ahead and tried to work out how much power is consumed by Fairy Lights on Christmas trees in Ireland during the 2006 holiday period.

By my reckoning the total power consumed by lights on Christmas Trees (and I only counted the indoor variety on the tree itself) is..

1,500 MegaWatts of power.

Looking at the numbers in another way, the total daily requirement to power Christmas Tree lights alone in Ireland is 375 MegaWatts. I read somewhere recently that one of the main power plants in Ireland has a rated output of 384 MegaWatts. So you make the connection.

Call me a spoilsport but surely in tandem with the whole "we all need to drive smaller cars/more fuel efficient cars/use public transport" mantra surely we need to do something to reduce the ridiculous spiralling frivolous use of energy. It is a scarce resource after all.

I think my estimates are on the lower side.

Lily Allen. I don't get her.

I was watching the annual Jools Holland new year's eve broadcast on the BBC last night with my wife and there was a right mixed bag of performers on there.

It's always a good way to see in the new year if you're at home on new year's eve.

Anyway, one of the performers was Lily Allen. She's "famous" in the UK but I'm not sure why. She's the daughter of fairly well-known comedian and actor Keith Allen so that's already a strong plus for the media, an angle for a story you might say when her fledgling singing career was starting off.

She has a recording contract and has released some records in recent times. She sang a couple of times last night and although her style is simple it's just not my thing.

Listening I found it hard to put out of my mind some of the daft things she has said in the media in recent weeks.

I'm not sure why she felt the need to say some of the stuff she did but she went ahead and did it anyway. For example she said that people who buy Paris Hilton's CD should be killed.

I have a problem with this whole 'people I don't like should be killed' idea. Shame on the news media for even picking that story up and printing it really.

She explained it away recently by claiming that she is like a gay man trapped in a woman's body, hence her tendency to be bitchy.

I understand that she is fond of bashing people on her myspace page too.

What happened to recording artists letting the music do their talking? Anyway, she seems to be well liked by folks in the UK. I'm just not sure why.

Happy New Year everybody

I have a good feeling about 2007.

I think this is going to be the year of fulfilled goals. So if you have a goal then this could be the year for it to be realised.

If you don't have a goal for the year yet, something you'd like to achieve or get or whatever then get busy thinking of something.

If New Year has arrived where you are by the time you read this then I hope you all found a nice way to ring in the new year.

Best wishes to all for a really great year in 2007.