Archive for April, 2007

The meaning of life

April 29, 2007 at 8:46 pm · Filed under AFK, General Confusion

Not a wren. Today.In a world where we struggle with the big questions, I have at last discovered the meaning of life. For wrens.

As a colour blind and self avowed bad birdwatcher, wrens have always held a special interest for me. As a tiny, tree coloured bird that lives in trees around lots of other trees, they have their own particular difficulties for me to spot. They may be one of the most populous birds in the country, but to me they may as well be invisible, seen but not heard.

After extensive research on this topic I have discovered the meaning of life for the wren. It exists and finds its fulfillment in the following step by step.

1. Wait for me to arriving hopefully, clutching my binoculars.
2. Make a noise, or better still fly tantalisingly close enough for me to know that a wren is about.
3. Stay completely still as I bring my binoculars up, release I’ve got them in the wrong spot, lower them, check, realise I had them in the right place all along but the bird is so damn small and tree coloured that I didn’t spot it in the binoculars first time, bring the binoculars up again and settle them on the fuzzy dot.
4. Make little movements while I frantically try to track the wren and focus at the same time.
5. Stop, just as I get it perfectly in focus.
6. Wait a nanosecond and fly away.

Once is a pain. Twice is frustrating. 6 times in half an hour is vindication for my theory. The meaning of life for wrens is to wind me up. As proof of this problem I present my latest photo of a wren not there, taken this morning. It makes me grateful for blue tits.

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Power of the mind

April 29, 2007 at 8:03 pm · Filed under Geek out, General Confusion

IBM are happy with their latest achievement. They’ve discovered it takes a supercomputer with 4096 processors to think ten times slower than a mouse with half a brain and for only 10 seconds.

Sooooooo, we’ll not be expecting the Matrix to become reality anytime soon then.

I can’t help thinking they could have got the same effect for a lot cheaper with the application of copious amounts of alcohol.

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New music

April 28, 2007 at 1:46 pm · Filed under General Confusion

I’ve been downloading a lot of new music this week and I’ve been determined to get it all for free. Not a single penny of mine has crossed the Internet as I’m getting my megabytes of music. Bit Torrent? Nah. Limewire? Are you kidding me? I’m going for creative commons music. Songs I can download completely legally.

Of course this means that I’m getting a load of very new music from people I’ve never heard of, but since when has an artist being signed to a label been an indicator of quality? Most people haven’t even heard of creative commons music and they’re missing out because of it. Sure the edges might not be polished completely smooth, but to me that’s a positive. What I’m hearing is real. Its authentic. Its like that band you loved when they brought their first album out, when they were still hungry, but the rest were never quite as good.

I’ve been a fan of Scott Andrew for a couple of years and I found him because of his creative commons music releases. Today I found another artist whose fun and intelligent approach to describing life in a pop song have instantly endeared him to me. I highly recommend you visit the website of Jonathan Coulton and listen to some of his songs. I’m particularly fond of this one, for the aforementioned fun and intelligence –

IKEA

Long ago in days of yore
It all began with a god named Thor
There were Vikings and boats
And some plans for a furniture store
It’s not a bodega, it’s not a mall
And they sell things for apartments smaller than mine
As if there were apartments smaller than mine

Ikea: just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen
Ikea: selling furniture for college kids and divorced men
Everyone has a home
But if you don’t have a home you can buy one there

So rent a car or take the bus
Lay your cash down and put your trust
In the land where the furniture folds to a much smaller size
Billy the bookcase says hello
And so does a table whose name is Ingo
And the chair is a ladder-back birch but his friends call him Karl

Ikea: just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen
Ikea: selling furniture for college kids and divorced men
Everyone has a home
But if you don’t have a home you can buy one there

Ikea: plywood, brushed steel
Ikea: meatballs, tasty
Ikea: Allen wrenches
All of them for free
All of them for me

I’m sorry I said Ikea sucks
I just bought a table for 60 bucks
And a chair and a lamp
And a shelf and some candles for you
I was a doubter just like you
Till I saw the American dream come true
In New Jersey, they got a goddamned Swedish parade

Ikea: just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen
Ikea: selling furniture for college kids and divorced men
Everyone has a home
But if you don’t have a home you can buy one there

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Weeds or flowers?

April 27, 2007 at 10:15 pm · Filed under AFK

grass vergeSpring has sprung. The roadside verges have become a riot of colour (even to one as colour blind as me) that I can’t help responding to with a smile. The vivid yellows of the dandelions and the hawkweed, the cheery white carpets of daisies, the gentle creams of clover, all set against the lush green of fresh spring grass. I see them and smile and it lifts the spirits.

To a gardener they’re weeds of course, a pest, a negative presence to be removed. How can something that looks so bright and cheery and colourful be a negative, it doesn’t make sense. Its all a matter of perspective. Perhaps any flower, any beautiful joyous little creation becomes a weed when it appears in the wrong place.

So I wondered, if its about perspective, does this just apply to things horticultural, or is it bigger? How often, I wonder, do we fail to see a beautiful flower in our lives because of our fixed perspectives, and hurry to declare it a weed? Maybe the problem doesn’t lie with the daisy, which when you look at it, really look at it, is a delicate and beautiful flower, but with the person looking at it. Its a daisy, its commonplace, there’s nothing special about it, its even an annoyance as we try to create a perfectly manicured lawn of a life. Then again, maybe a daisy is an invitation to look closely, to celebrate and embrace difference, to remember that the lawn will never be perfectly manicured and it just might be better because of that.

Go on, have a look at a daisy. Or a dandelion. You might just find that weed is a beautiful flower.

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Nostalgia

April 23, 2007 at 4:18 pm · Filed under Geek out, General Confusion

Nostalgia, its not what it used to be.

Geek nostalgia usually means emulation, but  sometimes old hardware has its attractions too, which is why this article on the BBC website about the Sinclair ZX Spectrum brings a smile. Ah, those young and innocent days of breaking the keyboard playing Daley Thompson’s Decathlon. Whose idea was it to make you run by repeatedly pressing buttons anyway?

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Branded

April 22, 2007 at 2:46 pm · Filed under AFK, General Confusion

The dictionary.com first definition of branded – 1.marked with a branding iron to show ownership: branded cattle.

We, who are so addicted to brands, using them as parts of our identity, to define ourselves, to give ourselves a sense of value, are apparently branded cattle. Willing to pay well over the actual value of items to obtain a particular brand, you are apparently marked with a branding iron to show ownership.

Ah ha! You are owned by your items, marked by them to show ownership! Look how I scoff at you, as I sit here writing this post, safe from the insidious effects of brand obsession, wearing my Tilley hat, my Scott eVest, my Birkenstock sandals, my……

Oh.

Bugger.

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Breakfast dilemma

April 22, 2007 at 2:46 pm · Filed under rhetorical questions

When eating a McDonalds sausage and egg McMuffin, is the egg meant to be on the top, or the bottom? Do the rules change if its a double?

Its a taxing question for a Sunday morning. I suspect further extensive research may be required.

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One hand in my pocket

April 21, 2007 at 11:35 am · Filed under Geek out

And that hand is on my USB memory stick/pendrive/jump drive/whatever.

This will be a slightly geeky post of tips, but at least they’re useful, which is more than can be said for most of what I write here.

USB memory sticks  – useful, cheap and with more and more storage for less and less money. They’re also horrendously insecure, unless you set them up right, and what can you do with them apart from store stuff and copy files? Alright, one thing at a time.

First, lets make those stored files secure. To do that, you need to download True Crypt, a fantastic encryption program that is completely free and damn near uncrackable. Unless you’re carrying around secret codes to launch nuclear missiles, this should do all you need and more.  Its even easy to use.

So, you’ve got your vital mp3’s, I mean important work documents, encrypted. What else are you going to put on all that free space? How about some programs? Yes, you can run programs directly from a USB memory stick and very efficently too, if you download the full suite of programs from portableapps.com . Yes, its free again and now you’ll always have a program available to show someone that hilarious video of a penguin falling through the ice, chat on instant messaging or even open that vital document. Need to step away from the computer or hide what you’re doing? Simple, unplug your USB memory stick, the program goes and all your data is encrypted and secure.

Concerned about running any programs or opening any documents on an unknown Windows PC that may be infected with virus etc? There’s a way around that too, by using the embedded version of Damn Small Linux. This will install onto your USB memory stick and when you run it it runs in its own emulator window, giving your an operating system within a window. Its not particularly intuitive to set up and get used to, but DSL has a good community who can help. Is it free? Better believe it.

So there you go, a new geek out post in a new geek out topic. I might well do more of these, if only for there to be something on the blog that isn’t utterly confused and rhetorical.

One final thing. Not only is all this software free as in gratis, its also open source, which means its free as in freedom. Open source – that’s my kind of freedom and definitely something not to be confused about.

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Freeview ascent puts it above Sky in digital race | Media | MediaGuardian.co.uk

April 21, 2007 at 11:05 am · Filed under General Confusion

Freeview ascent puts it above Sky in digital race | Media | MediaGuardian.co.uk

Something free overtaking the mighty Murdoch empire? It brings a smile to a confused face.

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Lying down

April 18, 2007 at 1:08 am · Filed under General Confusion

Does the Internet encourage duplicity?

Its a question I’ve been considering for a while and true to form it now leaves me confused. It seems that much of my online experience of late has involved deliberate attempts to lie to me and its difficult not to be disheartened by such experiences, especially when considering the needs of those who have to lie online that they will be safe in real life. Those who lie about their identity when blogging in a country where they could be imprisoned for what they write are still lying, but few would disagree about the necessity of them doing so, in fact most would even applaud them for their courage in taking the risks they are in blogging at all. Objectively, of course, they are still lying, but if they are not condemned for doing so, is it truly a lie? Is a lie only a lie when it hurts another? Is lying actually something that is subjective, rather than objective? When is a lie a lie?

The wikipedia editor who lied about his credentials and identity is a well known example to the “Internet-ati” of someone whose online lies were exposed, but did anyone consider whether the editing and contributions he had made were inaccurate at all? If they weren’t, are his lies somehow diminished, or is the principle of lying sufficient that even what he wrote that was factually correct is now devalued? Can objective facts be destroyed by the source of those facts being proven dishonest? Do facts then become subjective, or have they always been?

A forum I read recently exploded into a flame war when the claimed credentials of one of the posters was called into question. In the eyes of many, it only took her honesty to be questioned for almost all that she had said to then be attacked, attacks that became increasingly personal. Lying online still seems to be considered sufficient grounds for inflicting social pariah status on another, so why then do so many fall prey to its temptations? Is it perhaps because of a desire to be someone different to what they are in real life, to gain a sense of fulfillment in their lives that the offline world does not give them, or is it merely always malicious?

The online world Second Life is rife with dishonesty, much of which I have seen to be malicious, but also much that I have seen to be escapism. Paradoxically, many in Second Life who are tired of the duplicity and the lies around them, particularly concerning people having alts (other avatars, owned by the same person), often create their own alts to escape it, to “get away” from it all. In order to escape being lied to they embark upon their own lie, so is this objectively lying, or subjectively? Black and white, or shades of grey?

Anonymity and identity, both vital parts of the Internet and yet they seem to be in direct conflict. Is there a resolution? Is there even a need for a resolution, or does online dissembling and duplicity only reflect our nature and be indicative of it? If we do it online, do we do it also offline and the Internet only makes it easier?

Its definitely too confusing for me to find an answer, but I’ve been reminded of a saying while I’ve been writing this and it seems a good way to conclude yet another unfinished thought. It does not need proof to destroy trust, only suspicion.

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