October 2005 Entries

October 31, 2005

Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds

Something of a curiosity this one. Reynolds has rapidly established himself in the vanguard of British sci-fi with his Revelation Space trilogy, with its noirish universe, alien artifacts and very graphic writing.

Once that ended it was time for something different, and Century Rain fits that bill even if it does fall rather short as a piece of writing.

It is the twenty-third century and earth has become uninhabitable due to runaway nano-machines. Humanity has split into two groups, those who (quite reasonably in the circumstances) have decided that nano-technology is a bad idea, dubbed the Threshers, and those who think that the accident with earth is good reason to keep working on perfecting the technology, dubbed the Slashers (named after SlashDot. ha ha.)

The Threshers have the solar system and the Slashers have expanded into the galaxy with the benefit of a wormhole network they discovered.

On their travels they discover several system sized solid structures, which appear to contain planets.

By a stroke of luck they find a way into one via the wormhole network and discover that it is a replica of earth, people included, from the 1950s. E2 as it is dubbed is not quite the same as earth - it's history diverged sometime in the 1930s and the second world war never happened.

The Threshers get access to the wormhole and send operatives to E2 to find what is going on. One of them is murdered and Verity Auger is sent to E2 to recover some documents where she runs into an Wendell Floyd, an American private detective who is investigating the murder.

All of which is a very long-winded set-up for a chase thriller and love story, which is what occupies the second half of the book. Will they be able to save the planet? Probably. Will they get together in the end? Probably not.

Where Reynolds' previous books have made the implausable seem perfectly ordinary, this book uses plot devices like it is going out of fashion, has paper-thin characters, doesn't bother explaining why most people are doing what they are doing, and generally tries to be a pot-boiler.

But for all that it does succeed in being a page turner, albeit one with only the most predictable plot-twists.

Which leads me to conclude that while I didn't particularly rate this book, it was more because the author is capable of better rather than the story being a bad one, and if this was a first novel by someone else I would be noting them as a future prospect.

Two stars (out of five) if you have read Alistair Reynolds before
Three stars if you have not

Posted by Gerald at 7:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 30, 2005

Friend of the Idler: Gardening

I used to dislike gardening intensely. It was a chore, a thing that had to be done, effort, hardwork, a preventer of idling. But in recent years I have discovered, and come to love, its soothing qualities.

The most pleasurable aspect of gardening is its multiple time scales - the immediate, the medium term and the long term.

In the immediate, you can dig, plant, cut, trim, lop, harvest, tie, rake and hoe for instant, and often striking results. In 30 minutes I can mow my front and back lawns. In 45 I can also trim the edges, pull a few weeds from the borders and sweep the yard.

Those 45 minutes serve a second purpose - quality thinking time. Push, trundle, turn, push, trundle, turn. Snip, snip, snip. Dig, twist, lift, dig, twist, lift. None of it requires much by the way of higher brain functions, giving the mind leave to ponder the imponderables - the meaning of life, the ethics of war, and the arse on that girl in sales.

It seems to me that gardening has much in common with hairdressing - lots of snipping on autopilot, interspersed with brief checks and course corrections.

Unfortunately most hairdressers allow the underused brain to stay that way and instead subject the customer to banal conversations on themes of weather, holidays and last night's major drinking session. Personally I derive little comfort from knowing that the wielder of razor sharp scissors has a hangover that could fell an elephant. And I don't want to talk about the weather. In fact, shut the hell up and cut my hair.

Hairdressing should be the perfect career for philosophers and novelists - plenty of thinking time combined with the opportunity to meet a huge range of different people, potential characters all. For a couple of years of my Oxford incarnation my hair was cut by someone looking not unlike Zadie Smith. Now I am wondering if maybe it was her after all. Sure, she claims to live in cor blimey east London but that is probably just the marketing department being cheeky. In reality she plies her trade as a crimper in Oxford while she ponders her next opus.

There are other authors who fit the bill too, not least Julian Barnes, although clearly more of a barber than a 'hair designer.' The fact that the first short story of his last collection was titled "A Short History of Hairdressing" only adds weight to my flimsy argument.

But before I travel too far along the back passage of hairdressing (a passage, by all accounts, that is reguarly and vigorously travelled) I recall that I am supposed to be writing about gardening.

You might wonder how gardening is so different from housework and home improvement. They certainly have similar attributes - a quick tidy-up yields big results, they are easier if done regularly, and there are endless TV shows about them. But housework is only ever short term, and with housework you don't get any help from external forces.

Consider this: in March I planted some grass seed in a bare patch on my lawn. That same weekend I placed a tin of paint in my spare bedroom. Six months later, and with no additional work by me, the bare patch has been replaced with luxuriant grass. The bedroom meanwhile is still unpainted.

This is idler heaven - plant an acorn, get an oak tree. Ten minutes' effort by you, a bonus 50 years of effort from nature.

I have a variety of plants in my garden and I only know the names of two of them: grass and mint. The rest are a mystery to me, but with gardening that doesn't matter. No homework is required. The plants know what they are and what they need to do - they grow anyway.

If you have a specific need for a plant you can head to the garden centre, find an old-looking member of staff and say you want a shrub, so big, with blue or purple flowers that bloom all through summer. He will reel off a couple of latin words and lead you to the plant. If only all shopping was that easy.

There are those that try to make gardening a science, but it doesn't need to be. Gardening is a link to our agricultural past and needs no more science now than it did then. Plant, tend and harvest. All the real work is done by sunlight and rainwater.

And the result of this moderate effort, this gentle steering of nature - the perfect place to sit on a summers' evening, soothed by birdsong, fanned by a soft breeze and surrounded by nature's splendour.

Posted by Gerald at 9:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 29, 2005

Amazon Associates

I received an email from Amazon yesterday: "Amazon.co.uk Associates--Activate Your Account Now". It goes on to suggest I place links on my website and possible even banner ads.

I do indeed have an Amazon Associates account and I use it for both banners ads, for example in the right-hand sidebar, and specific product links, as on the left-hand sidebar.

So my account is already active. Indeed if I go to the Associates extranet I can see that I served over 10,000 impressions in Q3 2005 and there were 54 click-throughs. But no orders.

All of which reveals two things:

Firstly that the script that sends out the associates emails is lame. My account is very active, it just isn't successful. What the email should have said was 'Improve your conversion rates numb nuts' and list a few tips on ad placement and ad relevance.

Secondly, my UK readers are not doing the decent thing and navigating their Amazon shopping via my links. So support my idle lifestyle by ordering via my links and I will be moderately grateful.

And two and a halfly, since most of my visitors are US-based I should serve Amazon.com ads instead of .co.uk

Posted by Gerald at 1:37 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 28, 2005

Friday photo: Birdland, again

I don't know what this bird is, but with a bit of a wash and brush-up it could look quite handsome.

I still prefer the ducks though.
Posted by Gerald at 8:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 27, 2005

The Thursday Game: Mini Pool

Another low impact diversion. Good for when time is short, but you need to clear your head.

Mini Pool

Posted by Gerald at 6:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A new skin

I am working on a redesign of the site, although it is probably at least a couple of months from being ready to go live.

The draft site is here, and the plan is for a new colour scheme, redesigned sidebars, a new banner and better titles.

Currently the draft site has horrendous pastel shades, but that is only to show clearly the different divisions within the code. At the moment I am erring towards a pale grey/blue background, with darker panels for the sidebars and the central content. Individual posts will probably be boxed.

The new menus are rollover-style and apart from the colours, the ones on the right of the draft site are what I will use. I also want to change the look of the comment entry section, although I don't have any specific ideas yet.

But whatever I end up doing, rest assured that I have no plans to improve content and it will be drivel-as-usual.

Posted by Gerald at 12:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 26, 2005

Feeding frenzy

After a robust session of gardening on Sunday morning, I restocked the bird feeder and added a variety of food to the table and the ground, including whole peanuts for the squirrel to save him having to hang upside down on the feeder. He must get headaches from hanging like that.

Fifteen minutes later all hell broke loose. Four jackdaws, three wood pigeons, three magpies, a blackbird and patchwork of tiny birds were all looking for a piece of the action.

The pigeons are usually gutless when the corvids are around, and today was no exception as they ambled up towards the food then ran away again when a jackdaw dropped out of the sky. They finally discoved that the table had food but didn't have big scary birds but, being the least intelligent birds in my garden, by quite some way, decided that this would not be a smart time to stand united. So they had a fight over the admittedly very small bird table. Fuckwits.

Meanwhile the jackdaws and magpies were eating, fighting and doing some rilly neat aerial stunts, and the tiny birds were watching from the tree and twittering. Possibly they were giving a running commentary.

The magpies showed the most forethought - burying food in my lawn. A couple of stabs of the beak, drop the food and then cover with grass. Saving food for winter? Er, no. They dug the food back up fifteen minutes later. No attempt to repair the divot either, the gits.

And then as suddenly as it had started, the garden was quiet again. The pigeons returned to the tree, the magpies and jackdaws returned to the woods and the tinies returned to the feeder, flying relays.

And the squirrel? Well, he missed out.

Posted by Gerald at 8:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 25, 2005

Dream on

I dream, but I rarely remember my dreams. For this I consider myself accursed. There are worse afflictions, and perhaps there are only worse afflictions, but still it would be nice to remember more.

I do not put great store into dreams - they have no deep meaning. They are a mixture of current affairs, historical photo albums and some mental high jinks. They are like leafing through a scrap-book while listening to the radio. On acid.

When I wake I am usually aware that I have been dreaming, but not of the specifics. Sometimes I do remember what I was dreaming just before I woke, but forget within thirty seconds. That brief memory is like clutching at smoke.

Rarely I do remember in detail, but even then usually just a small excerpt.

Here are two recent snippets:

The next book in Jasper Fforde's Eyre Affair series will be written by Ben Elton. I was surprised at the news but then saw, or was shown, a copy of the book with the author's name on the cover. The book was on a white table in an all-white room. I then cut to an image of Jasper Fforde working on his new novel, title and theme unknown.
[I have no idea what inspired this.]

I was preparing to dive in full SCUBA gear. There were four or five others with me. I was not the leader of the group – the man who was had a blonde beard and was somewhat paunchy. We were diving to confront some non-specific monsters, which would be found at great depth. The dream cut away to a scene of a dismembered body, then returned to the final preparations. We were in a small pool in a white tiled room, the pool serving as the entrance to a deep cave system.
[This was inspired by an article I read a couple of weeks ago about the death of Dave Shaw in Bushman's Hole, South Africa. He was diving to recover the body of a fellow diver but died in the attempt. The article is here and is as good a piece of journalism as I have read all year. The dive pool bore much resemblance to the one in The Abyss]

Posted by Gerald at 7:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 24, 2005

Premium Bonds

I won the Premium Bonds this month, for the second time in three months. Alas it wasn't the £1 million top prize, but a modest £50 in each case.

For those not in the know, Premium Bonds are a UK state savings scheme. You buy bonds of £1 each and instead of the government paying interest equally across all bonds, the interest is lumpy and bonds are drawn monthly like lottery tickets to determine who wins.

The bonds retain their original value and can be sold back at any time. So unlike the lottery, you get your original money back even if you don't win.

Prize range from £50 to £1 million with a chance of 'winning' of around one in twenty-two thousand for a single bond in a single month. I hold £2,000 of bonds so I have a one in eleven chance of winning in any given month.

For my first 15 months I didn't win anything, but I am now back ahead of the curve with these recent wins.

All prizes are tax-free, and the overall interest rate is reduced to reflect this. On average Premium Bonds pay slightly below market rate, but since they offer the chance to win £1 million tax-free for a £1 investment, they are very attractive.

The risk the investor takes is that they might win nothing, and would effectively be holding money on deposit at zero interest rate. In these low inflation times, that is only a small cost.

The really clever thing about Premium Bonds is that they add some excitement to boring old bank interest. People consider a win as exactly that, rather than as simply the interest they have earned on a deposit, which is what it really is.

Premium Bonds make interest interesting, and that is no small achievement.

And after the wins in August and October I am fully confident that it will happen again in December and I will land some fat stacks of cash :-)

Posted by Gerald at 7:49 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 23, 2005

Friend of the Idler: Bill Murray

[When not filming] "I do absolutely nothing. I go home and stay there. I wash and scrub up each day, and that's it. One month I actually grew a moustache just so I could say I'd done something."

Posted by Gerald at 9:32 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 22, 2005

The A9 toolbar is back!

Those following the saga of the A9 toolbar will be delighted to know that it has been fixed. A veep at A9 emailed me to let me, and all the other whiners, know that it was ready for re-download.

They got caught out by Firefox's new way of handling extension preferences and A9 have moved to a webpage-based preference system. The odd thing is that all my other extensions (forecast fox, tabbrowser preferences, gmail notifier and chatzilla) have all coped perfectly well with the change and are still using dialog boxes for prefs and settings.

It looks like the A9 workaround is simply that, and hopefully they will return to a dialog box format in due course.

The other odd thing was that the fixed toolbar was not flagged for extension update. So any user who is checking for updates won't be aware that a fix is in place - to find it they need to visit http://toolbar.a9.com.

Thanks for the fix A9, now you can get to work on the rest of my wishlist ;-)

Posted by Gerald at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 21, 2005

Friday photo: Birdland, Bourton-on-the-Water

Not Birdland the New York jazz club named after the great Charlie Parker, but Birdland the visitor attraction in Bourton.

The penguins are the star attraction, being (a) freaking huge; and (b) within touching distance. They are also (c) smelly, but there you go.
Posted by Gerald at 6:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 20, 2005

Buy my house you beggars

My house has been up for sale for nearly three months and there is no sign of anyone buying it.

This weekend I will be appointing a new estate agent, and trimming the price, in the hope of sparking some interest at what is typically a very quiet time of year.

Of course, all houses can be sold for a price and I need to find a balance between getting a price I am happy with and not bankrupting myself while I wait for a sale.

I am living in a shared house in Cheltenham during the week, returning to Wycombe for weekends, so I am paying for the luxury of two homes.

The weekends mostly involve sprucing up the garden, feeding the birds and clearing out bits of junk. I do miss the daily soap opera of the birds and the squirrel, but will make sure I get myself a decent garden when I finally buy a new home next summer (presuming I don't go bankrupt in the meantime).

Posted by Gerald at 9:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 19, 2005

The barter economy

The definition of a barter economy is "an economy that lacks a commonly accepted currency, so all exchanges must be made with goods and services because money does not exist in these economies."

Although not many countries have an economy that fits this definition, all countries have barter activity. Country-level barter economies are less rare than you might think - in times of economic turmoil, when the currency becomes untrusted, a significant number of transaction move onto a barter basis. Russia and Argentina are fairly recent examples.

Back to localised barter. This doesn't happen because of a lack of a commonly accepted currency, it happens either because of a lack of liquidity or because there are valuation difficulties.

Jack has £5 worth of apples. Danny has £5 worth of oranges. Neither has any cash, they lack liquidity. But that's cool, because they can just swap apples for oranges. While they didn't use currency directly, they used it for valuation and it is still fundamental to the transaction. A barter deal, but not in the purest sense.

Dorothy has the alternator from an 1978 Ford Cortina in her loft. She doesn't remember how she ended up with it, but she doesn't need it. Still, it would be a shame to throw it away. Meanwhile, Felicia needs an alternator for her 1978 Cortina. She doesn't have any money, but she does have a rug that Dorothy rather likes. They decide to trade.

Here the trade was 'something I have for something I want'. Currency was used neither for exchange nor valuation. Value was determined by worth to the individuals rather than an external market price. This is a classic barter exchange.

And the reason I mention any of this is that I bartered a DSL Router for some Viagra last week (I ended up with the router). Nifty!

Posted by Gerald at 9:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 18, 2005

The Tuesday Game: The Office

A particularly shite Tuesday, and given the Tuesdays are almost always shite anyway, that makes it shite-squared. Or merde magnifique.

Today's game was chosen at the weekend, but turns out to be quite appropriate - escape from the office. And rather than fritter away several hours, it is a nice simple fifteen minutes of distraction. Enjoy.

The Office

Posted by Gerald at 9:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2005

Rebecca and James

I went to a wedding reception on Saturday and it had everything that a wedding reception should have.

The youngest person there was a few months old and the eldest was 101 years. Weddings are the only occasions that truly manage to span the years like this.

It also featured the wedding classic of small children dancing together, along with small children running from one end of the room to the other, and back again. Where do they get the energy?

And a buffet the size of Blackpool beach. And a cheesy disco. The classic wedding is alive and well!

And most importantly the bride looked amazing, the groom looked relieved and they looked as happy together as any two people ever could

I'm sure they will have many happy years together.

Posted by Gerald at 8:20 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 16, 2005

Zen confidential

Last week's Moment of Zen was a beauty. Unfortunately I am not able to report it and it will have to wait for my autobiography.

The book of my life will be one of the most tedious books ever published but thanks to the new technologies of Print-on-Demand (eg Booksurge.com) and e-Books at least I don't have to worry about persuading a publisher to run with it.

But then again by the time I get around to writing it, books will be redundant in all forms and I will have to create the VR-experience of my life. Now THAT would be ugly.

Back to the moment of Zen - I will give a quote from it, more for my own amusement than anyone else's. A tag which equally applies to almost everything I write. But hey, that's why I'm a blogger not a journalist.

Anyway...

"Not only is he a nerd, which is bad enough, but he is a fucking idiot!"

Posted by Gerald at 5:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 15, 2005

Dear A9.com

Forgive my rudery in skipping the pleasantries but I know that your time is precious, even if mine is less so, and it is best to avoid flabby comment and cut to the chase.

Fix the freaking toolbar and then start innovating again.

Yes, I know you guys have been working on some very sexy features in the main site. And yes, I know the toolbar benefits from that semi-directly. But still, the toolbar is a major asset for you. It drives usage of A9 search, which is only ranked 27th in the US. Fix the toolbar and the main site will benefit.

Here are a few ideas for you:
1. Make the toolbar work with Firefox 1.5. You moved heaven and earth to port the IE toolbar to firefox. Now it is incompatible. I am forced to use IE to get access to my A9 bookmarks, and you KNOW how annoyed that makes me

2. Add a 'blog this' facility....

(a) 'Blog this site/blog this page' which creates a thumbnail of the site/page for the user to save to their host. Or offer a generic thumbnail from Alexa. The latter is simpler, the former is cooler.

(b) 'Blog this text' where the user highlights the text and hits the button. The text becomes the basis of the post and is linked back to the original location.

(c) Full configurability for 'blog this'. A user can have multiple blogs and mulitple post types within a blog. Keep a simple vanilla style as the default option, but allow full xhtml/css editing for advanced users

3. Complete the circle with Alexa. You use Alexa webstats on both the toolbar and the search site, and siteinfo.xml is smart, but you don't allow rating of sites. Users can write a review on Alexa/Amazon, but who is ever going to bother? Allow a simple rating of sites from the toolbar - one to five stars. Use the star rating to provide 'people who like this site also like...' type recommendations in the siteinfo dropdown (and on the main search site)

4. Implement site tagging or (preferrably) integrate del.icio.us

5. Drag and drop - get it working in IE then extend the feature so that users can drag to the search box

6. Implement favicons in the bookmarks menu

7. Enable export of bookmarks to the browser or to a text file

8. Create a 'mail this page to a friend' feature. The user finds a cool site and hits the button to mail it to a friend. This has been on Amazon for years and is a logical feature for the toolbar. Allow pre-configuration of 'friends' to make it a one-click process.

If you need any other ideas, I will work for lattes. Now get to work!

Posted by Gerald at 3:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 14, 2005

Friday photo

The Sci-fi Museum, Seattle.

The building is shared with the Experience Music Project and was designed with the music purpose in mind - it is dedicated to Jimi Hendrix. But it perfectly suits the sci-fi museum too.

A blend of H.R. Giga and the Jetsons.
Posted by Gerald at 8:05 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 13, 2005

Happy Birthday Margaret Thatcher

Dear Margaret

Another year gone and another year closer to death. How the legions wait, dancing shoes ever within reach, for the news of your long awaited demise.

But before you drawn your final painful breath, allow me to thank you.

Thank you for destroying community in Britain
Thank you putting money ahead of love
Thank you for selling graveyards to fund warships
And thank you creating Tony Blair in your image

And kudos to you for destroying both the Conservative and Labour parties at the same time, making one unelectable and the other abandon its values.

I will leave it to the Stone Roses to speak for the millions:

I've seen your severed head
at a banquet for the dead
All dressed up dinner, looked so fine
Your shining silver salver
so tastefully powdered
With the finest military quick lime

Now try and picture this, as I gave you a kiss
The apple in your mouth
slipped in mine
The orchestra played the sweetest serenade
We laughed
as we put away your wine

So raise your glasses,
here's a toast to wasted lives
May all their ghosts come back to haunt you
And tell you how they died

How do you sleep?
How do you last the night and keep the dogs at bay?
How do you feel when you close your eyes, and try and drift away?
Does it feel any better now?
Does it mean any more?
when the angel of death comes knock, knocking,
And banging at your door

Posted by Gerald at 8:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 12, 2005

But what about the tree?

Much excitement this morning as I trundled along a country lane and discovered a stationary car on the other side of the road.

A dopey place to park and no mistake, particularly on a blind bend, but oh, what is this? a smashed in front end? oopsie.

The front of the car was comprehensively fucked and it looked like a good solid square-on impact. The driver was stood in front of it holding his phone as someone cooler might hold a gun, and looking rather self-conscious.

I lowered my window and offered a friendly "where's the other car?" to which he responded "I hit a tree", and I only just managed to stifle a laugh. I realise I should have been concerned about his welfare and all that but its not really my forte. Instead I asked if the tree was okay but he "dunno."

I pulled away slowly so that I could inspect the poor tree. It had lost a lot of bark but seemed to have survived the experience quite well.

The mystery was that the car had just taken a left turn but managed to hit a tree on the left side of the road, and end up facing forward in the direction of travel. If he had simply lost control of his motor while texting his mum he would have hit something on the right. I deduce that he must have performed a double selco with toe loop prior to impact, giving him plenty of time to say 'farrrrrrkkkkk' on a rising scale.

Its all fun and games until a tree gets hurt.

Posted by Gerald at 8:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 11, 2005

The Tuesday Game

Pandaf Golf - simple, addictive and challenging.

Perfect for idling away a few hours :-)

Posted by Gerald at 1:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 10, 2005

Tag. Erm, you're it

I have been tagged by lilliebet

...and have to post the fifth sentence from my 23rd post. I don't know why, but I am just going to follow orders and see if I get some free chocolate or something.

My 23rd post was Tech Porn and the 5th sentence was:

"If the caveman had the benefit of a learned counsel, he would point out that MP3-player lust had longevity beyond consummation, and laptop lust likewise, but the caveman can merely point, grunt and scratch his crotch."

So there you go.

I am not aware of five regular readers that have blogs, but if you are, and you do, do this:

1. Go into your archive
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same.

Posted by Gerald at 6:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 9, 2005

The Guardian Crossword

A crossword is the perfect companion for an idler. Newspaper carefully folded, brow furrowed and pen poised over the grid ready to lance the answers as they appear out of the ether.

In doing a crossword a person can depart the physical plane and partake of cerebral jousting with a compiler who is far removed and yet a familiar and welcome adversary. The zen-like contemplative state can be achieved anywhere and is an effective escape from the tedious world about us.

"Have you heard a word that I have said?"
"Sorry, I was doing the crossword."

Sorry? Hardly. "I am doing the crossword to avoid you drivelling on about your sister" would be a more honest reply.

For those who don't partake, the Times Crossword is always assumed to be the pinnacle of the art. It is all very correct and proper. Shoes polished, tie knotted appropriately, stiff upper lip and all that.

But it is a little dry. Dull but worthy even.

For deviousness, wit and all-round cleverness it is the Guardian Crossword that takes the biscuit. Their jumbo crossword last bank holiday managed to squeeze in half the countries in Africa, and a couple of weeks ago there was an underwear theme, which certainly made my day.

The trick behind a good crossword clue is to make it difficult to get the answer immediately, but obvious once you know it. If it can be amusing along the way, all the better.

He are my favourite clues from yesterday:
Economy independent of government knackers 'arry (7,6)
answer (drag over): Private sector [ PRIVATES + (H)ECTOR ]

Undertake precise manoeuvre and make old tender thing feel sexy? (4,2,1,8)
answer (drag over): Turn on a sixpence

Posted by Gerald at 2:37 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 8, 2005

Swannage

I was in Hampshire on Wednesday and was in the luxurious position of being a car passenger.

We were motoring at pace along a straight run, when I noticed a cultivated field of greenery, possibly spinach, with eight swans in it.

The swans were eating the plants. Some were sat on the ground and others standing, but all were clustered within a small area towards the centre of the field.

We form set ideas of where things normally belong:
Swan + River = Normal
and when an observation is beyond normal, our attention is caught (a fact not lost on the marketing weasels)

The field was at some remove from the road, such that rather than flashing past the window, the field moved gracefully in a cinematic tracking shot which, with the constant thrum of the road as soundtrack, was reminiscent of Peter Greenaway's films.

And that was my Moment of Beauty for the week just ended.

[footnote: "You either love him, in other words, or you hate him. In either case, you do not understand him." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, on Peter Greenaway]

Posted by Gerald at 11:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 7, 2005

Friday photo

The first of an irregular series of Friday Photos.

The Space Needle in Seattle on a beautiful autumn morning.
Posted by Gerald at 8:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 6, 2005

Climate summit postponed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4311310.stm

The first meeting of the Asia-Pacific climate pact, scheduled to take place in November in Australia, has been postponed, the BBC has learned.

Announced in July, the pact of six nations aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through technology and voluntary parnerships.

It has been hailed in some quarters as an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol.

Green groups say the postponement shows that governments involved view the Kyoto process as more important.

[continued]
---

Which is a tad disappointing. Maybe it is due to diary problems. And maybe it was always a cynical exercise in non-action.

At least there will be a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions due to the flunkies and hangers-on staying at home instead of junketing to Adelaide.

Posted by Gerald at 1:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 5, 2005

The taxi drivers speak

My rides to and from the airport are rarely dull, courtesy of my taxi drivers.

Last week's trip to Seattle was typically entertaining and, working on the dodgy premise that the drivers aren't bloggers (and heck, everyone else is,) I will present their thoughts here.

Driver One
Late 50's, from Pakistan
I admire Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos, but Bill Gates, I dunno. He has all that money, and he deserves it y'know. He made some great software. He is rich but he keeps trying to get richer, and y'know that's fine, except for the video games. Those games are bad for the children, and he is doing them just to make more money. I can't respect him for that.

Driver Two
Late 20's, from Somalia
Fuckin' Americans man. They sit in my cab and tell me what they saw on TV. They tell me what the TV told them to think. CNN said this, Fox News said that. They sit on their asses all day being told what to think. How fuckin' dumb is that? TV is killing this country. No-one thinks for themselves anymore.

And I gotta admit, they do have a point.

Posted by Gerald at 6:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 4, 2005

Atom

According to feedvalidator.org my atom feed is non-compliant with Atom 1.0.

Three questions:

1. Is there an Atom 1.0 compliant MT3.2 template?

2. Does anyone read atom feeds anyway?

3. Is atom named after the smallest unit of matter (which is made up of three quarks and therefore isn't) or does it refer to A to M which, according to my friend Pervy Pete, means something rather unpleasant.

Posted by Gerald at 1:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 3, 2005

In defence of Harry Potter

This is not a defence of Harry Potter the person, since he is a fictional character and is subject only to the rulings of Jurisfiction. Nor is it a defence of Harry Potter the series of novels, since I have not read any of them, although it might be argued that posting without prior knowledge is the very essence of the blogosphere.

Instead it is a defence of the inclusion of the Harry Potter series in my 'ten books I should have read by now,' since two-thirds of the comments received were somewhat critical in this regard.

My defence rests on two arguments.

One - Consistency

Are you quite mad? I am wide open to abuse (no tittering at the back!) when it comes to quality. Included in the list were Elmore Leonard, Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling. These three authors write popular fiction of the sneering mass-market kind, and while each is in the list for a different reason, they are equally open to derision.

My first argument therefore is one of consistency. Potter is wizards and magic shite that captured the imagination of children. The da Vinci code is conspiracy theory shite that captured the imagination of adults. The case against Rowling is a malicious prosecution against a book which can clear any bar low enough for Dan Brown.

Two - How did it do that?

The Harry Potter books reversed the decline in childhood reading single-handed. Given the marketing dollars behind games consoles, television and crack cocaine, that is a very impressive achievement. The first in the series, after being slated by the crtitcs, became a hit by word of mouth.

I am not expecting it to be one of my best reads ever, but I am hoping to find the same magic that inspired millions to read some more.

My second argument therefore is that these books did something special and I want to read one of them to find out how. It is more to discover the phenomenon that to have an enjoyable read.

I conclude my case.

Footnote:It is Da Vinci that is indefensible. It is only in my list because I promised someone that I would if it reached sales of 10 million in the UK, and this is a real and terrifying possibility. I know it is a bad book badly written, but a promise is a promise.

Posted by Gerald at 12:56 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 2, 2005

Site traffic

I had 1,383 unique visitors in September which is almost entirely down to the three blog exchanges that I use. Within the total there must be a few people who return by choice, but mostly it is people stopping by for 30 seconds.

Over time more people will return by choice, so the theory goes, or will find this site via search engines and links on other sites.

The exchanges I use, and my impressions of them, are:

BlogClicker - gives me the most traffic of the three, and a good range of sites to view, but is low on features
BlogExplosion - close on the heels of blogclicker for traffic, but with way more features
BlogAdvance - the least traffic, by some way, as it is a very new site; but it has the best community spirit.

When I step down to two exchanges, it will probably be BlogClicker that I drop, since banner impression can only be bought with cash, whereas BlogExplosion lets me buy them with blogview credits; and I am figuring that BlogAdvance will grow quickly due to a strong community.

Meanwhile 55 visitors were supplied by search engines, somewhat contrary to broader market shares, with 28 from MSN, 24 Google and 3 Yahoo. Rather spookily, if you search for 'perfume quiz' on MSN search, my blog entry of that title is ranked number 1. Equally spooky is the non-performance at Yahoo. I need to do some research on Yahoo SEO.

The other highlight was being quoted on slate.com (here) which delivered 20 visitors.

Which is nice.

Not than I am blogging for traffic. I am blogging to improve my writing, which is one of my 43things, but the traffic helps to judge what I do, and also encourages me to keep it regular, as it were.

And in that, the blog exchanges provide many many examples of well run blogs, giving both the inspiration and ideas to do better.

P.S. All of the links to the blog exchanges above have referral codes which gain me a few extra credits if you sign up so, like, get on with it ;-)

Posted by Gerald at 8:12 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 1, 2005

So that's that

Wednesday was my final day at Amazon Seattle, topped off with a very pleasant dinner at Lola.

Then up at 4.45am, hotel, taxi, terminal, aircraft, unscheduled landing at Calgary, terminal, aircraft, landing at Toronto, terminal, bus, terminal, bus, terminal, aircraft, landing at Heathrow, terminal, shower, car, bar.

I missed my connection in Toronto after the detour to Calgary, which itself was due to a broken doohicky in the aircraft, so arrived in London five hours later than planned. Air Canada redeemed themselves though by placing me in row 1, and I did get around four hours of respectable sleep.

The downside was that I arrived late for my own leaving celebration, but no-one seemed to notice!

The afternoon was spent completing last-minute work, stripping the laptop, clearing my desk and getting an expense claim in, and then out at five for the final time. My escape from Slough.

I would like to say something nice about Slough after seven years over two jobs. But... nothing nice to say. It is a suppurating boil on the face of England; a filthy beast lying in its own ordure. Okay, maybe one nice thing... The Office is based in Slough. Now there is a double-edged sword if ever there was one.

Although Amazon have lost me as an employee, I am still a big fan. There are a couple of very exciting Amazon projects launching soon, which I will comment on once they do (currently double-triple-secret), and I will also try to explain what the Robot Coop is all about.

Meanwhile, I guess I am unemployed :-)

Posted by Gerald at 8:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack