The usual rather prolix update.
Worth restating my guiding principle for these blogs, I try and balance a reasonable frankness with avoiding offending and upsetting people. Which seems a fair compromise for making them reasonably true to my life, and reasonably readable. I put this into practice by being slightly careful about what I do write, so that I don't just rant on at who ever has annoyed me recently. As a longer term perspective has generally shown my judgement to be wholly rubbish, and folk that annoy me one day, turn out to actually be wonderful the next.
Also I don't intend rewriting past blogs, just to give myself the benefit of hindsight, so if I do have a rant about something, then I feel duty bound to "un-rant" myself in a subsequent blog. It is probably one of those things like nylon bedsheets, and school assemblies that is good for the soul.
Anyway, I was ranting on about hotdesking at my work. From speaking to people, it sounded like I would shortly be completely deskless, and reduced to sitting outside with a manky plastic bag, and some grubby Big Issues. However, although many desks do have putative occupants, they seem to be some way off, so with a mere modicum of ingenuity, it should be perfectly workable. I now feel penitent and suitably apologetic about my previous petulance.
Accordingly [one of my favourite words, which I use almost like a coder would to signify a change of tack] because of the fact that the work is interesting, and the people are great, I now want to stick with my current job.
Work week was not too busy, but getting to know my new colleagues better, and getting my teeth into some work at last. Not knowing much yet, I'm not much use yet, so I don't have much to do, so difficult to know how exactly to pace work. These half busy, half quiet times are much more difficult to pace, and I feel rather unmethodical and disorganised, till I hit a routine of working.
Usual darkness, in the mornings, in the evenings, which does leach your energies.
Slightly miffed that I had not made a punt on the Northern Rock shares, I was severely tempted, and clearly that was the rock bottom for them at the start of the week, I might not have doubled my money, but it would certainly have been possible to make a very quick substantial return buying early in the week, and selling a few days later.
Of course, this is all purely theoretical, as you would really have wanted to make a punt with around a thousand pounds, to minimise the proportion going out in commission, and I would only use less than a quarter of my portfolio, at most, for such punts, and I simply did not have the cash available to invest at the time.
However as my shares portfolio does build up, it might well be worth setting aside some floating monies, just for opportunistic punts.
Vexed by recent share fluctuations, but inclined to tough it out with my current shares, no point in selling at a loss if I don't like the shares, and the ones I do like, don't look set to fall enough to offset the transaction costs of selling to later re-buy. I will look at the next year as a time to just quietly buy more shares, like with housing, we seem to be at the top of the market, but it seems more likely to slow down, than to drop catastrophically.
I do try and think about how the basic economy is changing, and then use that to inform the shares that I invest in.
So, my quick predictions
UK property is overvalued, so not worth investing in
Banks and building societies, financials generally, the good will persevere, but room for fresh new blood, so avoid all but the really well run, overall expect the sector to decline
energy will get more expensive, but invest in those producing energy, including nuclear, not just those selling it, avoid the airlines
DIY will resurge slightly, as people make do with staying put, but not to previous heights
mining, worth a punt, but success relies on picking a winner, or getting in when there is mismatch between supply and demand, diamonds possibly worth considering
in terms of underlying structure, we are at the top of the market at the moment, however I would expect volumes traded to diminish, without actually leading to serious falls. However the market is excessively volatile, over discounting shares on bad news, and only correctly slowly. Hence the newsworthy suffer unduly, while dull plodders get away with their dull plodding.
There is a major issue of what to do with capital. There are the oil producers, China, India, building up massive surpluses, with relatively litle to do with the money, but invest in Western equities and the like. This has suited the West, because, we are not investing, we use credit instead of prudence. Accordingly needing to find somewhere for capital to go, has propped up the West.
One feature of this, is that in the West we own relatively little of the real wealth generating companies. Fine at an individual level we get a salary, but ownership of the real money-generators, the businesses themselves is drifting East.
Another feature is that investing in Western equities, rather forgets what equity investing was about, it was about generating capital for infrastructure. At its most simplistic, you raised capital to build and crew a boat, to go to the New World, to find gold, to come back, and make you wealthy.
We are now speculating on equities, but we have lost sight of them as their original purpose of a means of raising capital.
Why does this matter?
Well, now you look at an equity as a rival for a dull building society account. But as citizens of the UK, we should have a financial stake in the businesses that it consists of, if we don't, who will. And we do not look at equity as a risky punt, that might bring huge rewards, when the boat comes in, but could be dead losses, when the boat sinks.
In the East, they invested here because there was little else they could do with that kind of money. But, the world is shrinking. Look at Dubai, trying to reposition itself as a premier tourist resort, look at the infrastructure work going on across the world. Of course not all these infrastructure projects will work, but some will. These are opportunities we lack the ability to participate in, but for the East, they can use their capital to recreate themselves in new and improved ways. The economic victors of the second world war, were those countries that had been razed to the ground, had the educated people, and had to rebuild themselves.
What advantage does old money have, when the new money is smarter!
Accordingly, Western Equity markets are not the only show in town, they will decline in importance as the world remakes itself in the next few decades.
Another intriguing feature is the growth of businesses with no variable costs. In the past these were very rare, now they are increasingly common.
Elementary lesson in Costing -
fixed costs in a shop - the rent and rates, always there,
variable costs in a shop - purchase costs of goods, the more you sell, the more you need to buy
So, a farmer has labour variable costs associated with each tonne of barley he harvests
but Bill Gates, has virtually no additional costs associated with each copy of Microsoft Office that he sells. Additionally there is no limit to the number of copies that Bill can produce, whereas the farmer has finite land.
Once again, why does this matter?
Well it serves to accelerate the trend that money making potential is concentrated, rather than spread out. The successful business can make a huge amount, there are often fewer barriers to entry for the many hopefuls. The market is now more 'perfect' as knowledge is more accessible.
The issue is not just one for Microsoft, Jonathan Coulton recording music, Scott Sigler recording podcasts, developers of software, they can all now access a global market with relative ease, and at minimal cost. This is great for the bright and talented.
However the grunt work is not so necessary, it is lower paid, lower status, easily outsourced, or performed by migrants. The world will belong to a highly paid and highly skilled and well connected elite.
There is a limit to how many flat screen televisions you might want, but is there a limit to how many ringtones you can buy, or software plug-ins, is fashion and ephemera going virtual, as we live digital lives, spending online, and defining ourselves online.
One thing that is not scalable is trust, I remember at university the rich and well connected stuck together, they had gone to the same private schools, they went to the same classes, they would end up working in the same places. These networks are not easily broken into. I don't know which networks will be the crucial ones, it might not be the well connected upper classes. But we will need to pick our networks well, and use them effectively.
The old rules, plenty of experience, being here a long time increases status, you've paid your taxes, you are entitled, won't be so good in future, and might even be a hindrance to developing the skills and attitudes that you do need to succeed.
Anyway on the IT front, I have also been continuing to play around with various hardware and software. The problematic external hard drive from LaCie has been fixed and returned, and seems fine now. So that out of the way, I've ordered some additional RAM as it is cheap as chips these days.
I have also been playing around with Bento, which really is lovely, and the tech support is like the really enthusiastic support you get with shareware, developers participating really actively on their forums, and being bright eyed and bushy tailed, rather than dull and corporate. Not sure that it is really a database, in the dull boring sense, reporting and searching seem pretty rudimentary, but it is a lovely fun piece of software, and for home users it could very quickly become indispensable, for silly little things like tracking Christmas cards and the like.
I have been tracking some of the various things that seem to trigger my migraines, and in parallel with the Hawthorne Plant findings, the fact that I am noting these things down, seems to discourage me from doing anything that is too bad for me. The mere fact of knowing that the details will be recorded seems to make a difference. There might be scope for extending this slightly to some of the other things that would be good habits to have, but are difficult to make time for. One hint on these, is aiming for longer and longer sequences of good behaviour, so that if you do forget to do something, then you simply start again at building up a long chain of good behaviour. Like the signs on the building sites, we have been accident free for 100 days, because you are never accident free forever, so why get depressed over it, focussing on the negative.
I have also been playing around with RapidWeaver and the new plugin from YourHead, Kwix. Basically this is moving menu, that is quite fun. It is reasonably easy to set up, and does look wonderful. I've mentioned this before, but it does strike me as intriguing that there is now such an infrastructure of these things. To reiterate a previous posting,
RapidWeaver is a piece of software for Mac Users to code their own websites. It is not exactly basic, but there is scope for additional bells and whistles.
YourHead produce plug ins, which allow you to create more elaborate pages, including the aforementioned Kwix, which creates bouncy menus.
Henk Vriesll....?? then produces additional themes and icons that can be used within Kwix, so that you can customise it further.
Now RapidWeaver is a serious bit of coding requiring a decent team and support, but Kwix is relatively simpler, and a decent coder could probably create something similar themselves, but it would take a lot of time, and you would really want to know that you were going to get paid at the end, or love coding, before you would attempt it. Finally the themes and icons that Henk does would probably not be much beyond my abilities, but would probably require quite a lot of time and fiddling around, so I would be happy to pay for someone else having done this.
Having done the work, and set up the website, these people can then just let the money roll in. Obviously the market diminishes as it gets more specialised, there is no market for Kwix without RapidWeaver and no market for Kwix themes without Kwix and RapidWeaver. But the effort and support required is also correspondingly less, so there is probably enough potential income in relation to effort for each level of the ecosystem to be perfectly viable. And the more players within the ecosystem, the healthier it is, and the better for everyone.
Sunday 27 January 2008
Sunday 20 January 2008
morning is broken - where did the sun go
Morning is broken - where did the sun go
After a very positive first week at my new job, the second week has been less successful. As the work area is awaiting an accomodation reorganisation, I have simply been hotdesking, finding an empty desk to work at. However where initially there was a desk handy for my colleagues that was available for three days a week, this is now no longer available, so I moved to a more remote desk, but that too will become unavailable on Monday, so I've no idea where I'll be sitting from then on.
There is also the issue of a couple of boxes, of the usual personal tat, that you lug about with you, which is not really an issue when you have a desk, but becomes an issue when you are deskless.
All in all, my choice of Christmas reading "Detox your Desk" now seems somewhat ironic.
Of course these things have a tendancy to turn on a sixpence, falling into place unexpectedly, but it is always a mistake to rely on providence.
My gut feeling at the moment, is just to let the powers that be know that I am finding this hotdesking a nuisance, and start looking at other posts. I don't really want to just go for any post, this current post would be a tough one to beat, but you cannot really strip out the hotdesking aspect. In theory things should sort out in March, but I don't get the impression that folk are talking about March, like they really believe it will be March.
At least flagging up the issue now has the benefits of clarity and straightforwardness. Being realistic offering someone a post and then expecting them to just work from whatever empty desk they can find, really is a pretty big ask. By tolerating the situation I run the risk of making it seem acceptable.
Not much else to report - still very dark all the time, which is a bit nightmarish - leave home in the dark, get home in the dark - I've seen the movies, nothing good ever happens at night.
I think I might try and work up a systematic list of migraine triggers to keep an eye on.
I have been playing around with dot mac, though I must confess that I am still struggling to get my head round what exactly it does. Granted it offers email, but then you can get that from google for nothing, the galleries and webpage just seem a bit tricksy. I remember coding stuff by hand, so I'm a bit resistant to any gee whizzery, if I don't know where the files are stored and the like. The backup is useful, but I'm not really sure how it works, or how I would actually use it if I needed to. I back up to external hard drives anyway, so it is not essential.
Anyway I suspect that I will keep the contract, simply for the sanity factor that it will synchonise my calendar and diary across my desktop and laptop computer. However I am quite sure that Apple could have built in such bluetooth synchonising functionality into a Mac without the need for dot mac, but chose not to, so they could charge for it. There are plentiful options to do a bluetooth synchronisation to a PDA device, so I cannot see the logic of not providing the functionality to actually synchronise to a computer.
The functionality available for Leopard and Tiger interfacing with dot mac differ slightly, making me slightly more befuddled, I might upgrade to Tiger for the desktop, but then again maybe not. All the peripherals work fine connected to the desktop, so probably best to let sleeping dogs lie. More ram would be useful though, when I feel brave about poking about the innards of my computers.
Still there is a long list of IT upgrades and purchases to look forward to. My Christmas spending spree was only just the beginning.
I've also bought a couple of the Clifford Fonts off of FontShop. Now I'm no Font purist, so I'll doubtless confuse fonts and faces. Anyway the whole world of fonts has apparently moved on since they came on sheets from Letraset, and even since they came on CDs, where you got all different sizes and styles for the same font.
The Clifford face is designed by Akira Kobayashi, and is a serif font, which has a nicely handcrafted, almost calligraphic quality. It does however confusingly come with various different variations. I first bought one of the three small caps versions, which has big capitals and little capitals, and is a pleasant variation on using bold all the time. Then I bought a matching normal font face. However you cannot simply bold these faces, as you normally can with electronic fonts. I'm not sure if this requires another font face.
Another confusing thing is that there are special characters like two F, basically a more attractive version of ff that respects the aesthetics of the two letters appearing together.
However I really don't know how you would make this special character appear when required, without going through the text and doing it manually.
I suspect that I am getting into high end typographic niceties here.
Suffice to say, they are exceptionally attractive fonts, though clearly not an essential item. I like just displaying them in large font sizes, just to admire the precise cut of the letters.
After a very positive first week at my new job, the second week has been less successful. As the work area is awaiting an accomodation reorganisation, I have simply been hotdesking, finding an empty desk to work at. However where initially there was a desk handy for my colleagues that was available for three days a week, this is now no longer available, so I moved to a more remote desk, but that too will become unavailable on Monday, so I've no idea where I'll be sitting from then on.
There is also the issue of a couple of boxes, of the usual personal tat, that you lug about with you, which is not really an issue when you have a desk, but becomes an issue when you are deskless.
All in all, my choice of Christmas reading "Detox your Desk" now seems somewhat ironic.
Of course these things have a tendancy to turn on a sixpence, falling into place unexpectedly, but it is always a mistake to rely on providence.
My gut feeling at the moment, is just to let the powers that be know that I am finding this hotdesking a nuisance, and start looking at other posts. I don't really want to just go for any post, this current post would be a tough one to beat, but you cannot really strip out the hotdesking aspect. In theory things should sort out in March, but I don't get the impression that folk are talking about March, like they really believe it will be March.
At least flagging up the issue now has the benefits of clarity and straightforwardness. Being realistic offering someone a post and then expecting them to just work from whatever empty desk they can find, really is a pretty big ask. By tolerating the situation I run the risk of making it seem acceptable.
Not much else to report - still very dark all the time, which is a bit nightmarish - leave home in the dark, get home in the dark - I've seen the movies, nothing good ever happens at night.
I think I might try and work up a systematic list of migraine triggers to keep an eye on.
I have been playing around with dot mac, though I must confess that I am still struggling to get my head round what exactly it does. Granted it offers email, but then you can get that from google for nothing, the galleries and webpage just seem a bit tricksy. I remember coding stuff by hand, so I'm a bit resistant to any gee whizzery, if I don't know where the files are stored and the like. The backup is useful, but I'm not really sure how it works, or how I would actually use it if I needed to. I back up to external hard drives anyway, so it is not essential.
Anyway I suspect that I will keep the contract, simply for the sanity factor that it will synchonise my calendar and diary across my desktop and laptop computer. However I am quite sure that Apple could have built in such bluetooth synchonising functionality into a Mac without the need for dot mac, but chose not to, so they could charge for it. There are plentiful options to do a bluetooth synchronisation to a PDA device, so I cannot see the logic of not providing the functionality to actually synchronise to a computer.
The functionality available for Leopard and Tiger interfacing with dot mac differ slightly, making me slightly more befuddled, I might upgrade to Tiger for the desktop, but then again maybe not. All the peripherals work fine connected to the desktop, so probably best to let sleeping dogs lie. More ram would be useful though, when I feel brave about poking about the innards of my computers.
Still there is a long list of IT upgrades and purchases to look forward to. My Christmas spending spree was only just the beginning.
I've also bought a couple of the Clifford Fonts off of FontShop. Now I'm no Font purist, so I'll doubtless confuse fonts and faces. Anyway the whole world of fonts has apparently moved on since they came on sheets from Letraset, and even since they came on CDs, where you got all different sizes and styles for the same font.
The Clifford face is designed by Akira Kobayashi, and is a serif font, which has a nicely handcrafted, almost calligraphic quality. It does however confusingly come with various different variations. I first bought one of the three small caps versions, which has big capitals and little capitals, and is a pleasant variation on using bold all the time. Then I bought a matching normal font face. However you cannot simply bold these faces, as you normally can with electronic fonts. I'm not sure if this requires another font face.
Another confusing thing is that there are special characters like two F, basically a more attractive version of ff that respects the aesthetics of the two letters appearing together.
However I really don't know how you would make this special character appear when required, without going through the text and doing it manually.
I suspect that I am getting into high end typographic niceties here.
Suffice to say, they are exceptionally attractive fonts, though clearly not an essential item. I like just displaying them in large font sizes, just to admire the precise cut of the letters.
Sunday 13 January 2008
Hamlet in the Office
I'm not too sure how to organise this blog,
I have tended to just aggregate stuff together, running through whatever I have been upto in the week, with the odd stand-alone item.
I did start using the tags and categories, but I've rather given up on that as I don't particularly like how I was originally tagging and catagorising, but I might go back over the blogs, because I can see that using them properly does make a mass of blogs vastly more useful.
Anyway, running through the usual virtual standing items
IT
In my folly, I thought that getting an extra computer would make life simpler. It has in that I can now use the laptop as my personal computer, and get on it when I like. However version control, and all that is starting to be a major pain. I'm well covered for backing up, both computers are backed up to external hard drives, the desktop running tiger - using SuperDuper, and the laptop using leopard - using TimeMachine.
I think that I need to do some creative thinking on how to tackle this. I asked a friend who is pretty techie, and he suggested looking at it on an application basis, which seems pretty practical. Asking what folk did on a Forum, suggested that .mac be used to synchronise the usual addresses, and calendar stuff, with one computer simply being designated the main one, and stuff living there.
There seems to be a lot to be said for this approach, I've long taken the view that running parallel systems is just asking for trouble.
Accordingly, I have taken out a free trial of .mac, and I'll see how that goes. I suspect that I will simply treat my laptop as a slimmed down typing machine, and maybe use iDisk to share a few key documents. Though ideally each application will have a lead computer, that it is used on.
With applications like DevonthinkPro, there is scope to aggregate information together into a single database, rather than trying to mirror file structures.
Anyway, a little thinking required, but I think I am working out what the problems are, and possible solutions.
Work Personal
I have deliberately tagged this section as work/personal, because in a way they overlap. As I only talk about work in the most general of senses, it is more about me than anything else.
Anyway, new job, a sideways move to a new part of the office. I'm not sure if it is the fact that there are slightly more men than women, or just a different culture, or subject area, but the atmosphere does feel completely different. Not saying anything against where I was before, I liked them a lot, but I get the feeling that I'm going to enjoy where I am now. Folk seem positive and businesslike, just getting on with stuff.
It feels like a good move for me. I suppose I should really decide what I want to do, there is a bit of me that would like to run the entire office, while another part of me, would like to slope off and do other things. Maybe I should think just how ambitious I want to be. As I get more experience, and more work under my belt, the opportunities appear to get on.
Having already tagged this as work/personal, there is also my perennial dabbling, which I enjoy, though I do keep coming back to the thought that if you want something done, you ask a busy man. I'm certainly busy, though I do wonder that I'm over-stretching myself sometimes. Some interesting meetings coming up, and some useful work in hand.
LifeHack
I did make a concerted start on Detox Your Desk a few weeks back, and while it went splendidly as I was trying to clear my desk for my old job, on arriving at my new job, I've been hotdesking, so
Creative
One of the benefits of having the laptop, is that I can now spend more time typing and writing. I use a little policeman's notebook to capture ideas, and generally I seem to be coming up with ideas quicker than I am transcribing them to the computer, and transcribing them, quicker than I can work them up fully. However these things are like the tide going in and out, liable to shift. So I'll push on jotting down ideas, and typing them up and seeing where it all goes to.
I have tended to just aggregate stuff together, running through whatever I have been upto in the week, with the odd stand-alone item.
I did start using the tags and categories, but I've rather given up on that as I don't particularly like how I was originally tagging and catagorising, but I might go back over the blogs, because I can see that using them properly does make a mass of blogs vastly more useful.
Anyway, running through the usual virtual standing items
IT
In my folly, I thought that getting an extra computer would make life simpler. It has in that I can now use the laptop as my personal computer, and get on it when I like. However version control, and all that is starting to be a major pain. I'm well covered for backing up, both computers are backed up to external hard drives, the desktop running tiger - using SuperDuper, and the laptop using leopard - using TimeMachine.
I think that I need to do some creative thinking on how to tackle this. I asked a friend who is pretty techie, and he suggested looking at it on an application basis, which seems pretty practical. Asking what folk did on a Forum, suggested that .mac be used to synchronise the usual addresses, and calendar stuff, with one computer simply being designated the main one, and stuff living there.
There seems to be a lot to be said for this approach, I've long taken the view that running parallel systems is just asking for trouble.
Accordingly, I have taken out a free trial of .mac, and I'll see how that goes. I suspect that I will simply treat my laptop as a slimmed down typing machine, and maybe use iDisk to share a few key documents. Though ideally each application will have a lead computer, that it is used on.
With applications like DevonthinkPro, there is scope to aggregate information together into a single database, rather than trying to mirror file structures.
Anyway, a little thinking required, but I think I am working out what the problems are, and possible solutions.
Work Personal
I have deliberately tagged this section as work/personal, because in a way they overlap. As I only talk about work in the most general of senses, it is more about me than anything else.
Anyway, new job, a sideways move to a new part of the office. I'm not sure if it is the fact that there are slightly more men than women, or just a different culture, or subject area, but the atmosphere does feel completely different. Not saying anything against where I was before, I liked them a lot, but I get the feeling that I'm going to enjoy where I am now. Folk seem positive and businesslike, just getting on with stuff.
It feels like a good move for me. I suppose I should really decide what I want to do, there is a bit of me that would like to run the entire office, while another part of me, would like to slope off and do other things. Maybe I should think just how ambitious I want to be. As I get more experience, and more work under my belt, the opportunities appear to get on.
Having already tagged this as work/personal, there is also my perennial dabbling, which I enjoy, though I do keep coming back to the thought that if you want something done, you ask a busy man. I'm certainly busy, though I do wonder that I'm over-stretching myself sometimes. Some interesting meetings coming up, and some useful work in hand.
LifeHack
I did make a concerted start on Detox Your Desk a few weeks back, and while it went splendidly as I was trying to clear my desk for my old job, on arriving at my new job, I've been hotdesking, so
Creative
One of the benefits of having the laptop, is that I can now spend more time typing and writing. I use a little policeman's notebook to capture ideas, and generally I seem to be coming up with ideas quicker than I am transcribing them to the computer, and transcribing them, quicker than I can work them up fully. However these things are like the tide going in and out, liable to shift. So I'll push on jotting down ideas, and typing them up and seeing where it all goes to.
Sunday 6 January 2008
repeating descending sounds
I had this terrible dream, it must be because I had seen a bit of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory the day before, but I dreamt that the entire cast of the film were chasing after me, it was terrible, I must have been in a cold sweat, they were all running after me and trying to catch me, when suddenly I woke up and sat straight up, boy was I glad that I hadn't been caught by the oompah loompahs.
I've decided that there needs to be some more humour in this blog, so if I can think of any good jokes then I'll be sure to put them in.
One thing that I have been thinking about recently is that often poetry can have a sort of internal melody, if you take a line like
tyger tyger burning bright
and you check where your tongue is as you pronounce each syllable, then it is
high low, high low, high low, high
so even beyond the simple rhyme that you can have between lines, you can have an internal repetition.
Of course this probably quite a poor example, in that it repeats the same word twice, but one of my favourite lines of my own is
we passed quiet cities in the night
which I would translate as
middle low, high middle, high middle, high middle high
which is a sequence of repeating descending sounds.
I'll not elaborate any further as it does rather hurt my head to figure this out, and there is unfortunately no easy way to cheat and look it all up on the internet. Anyway it is something that I thought that it might be worth noting.
Going round the usual circuit of my favourite topics, I have been spending more time with Devonthink Pro, and experimenting with DevonAgent.
By way of clarification Devonthink Pro is difficult to describe, it could support a paperless office, or act as a personal wiki, or even just a repository for writing. It does actually combine a number of features from shareware products (do they still call them that) that I actually use, and have paid for,
for example
I could use it as a sort of wiki - like voodoopad
or to provide a whole screen solution for typing - like Writeroom.
On the other hand, DevonAgent will intelligently aggregate the results of internet searches from a number of search engines, weeding out duplications. It has a variety of different scripts for searching. It was dreadfully slow, and seemed rather pointless, but I figured out that I had it on the wrong one of these scripts, there is a pull down available at the start of the search box. Once fixed, it seemed to run just dandy. What with the recent MacSanta and sundry other online software purchases though, I'm trying to cut down, so I'll just let the very generous free tryout period for DevonAgent play out, and see if I still want it then. I have discovered that even if you don't actually cut down on your expenditure, if you can just manage to postpone it for a while, then it is almost as effective.
So I am now wondering whether I should spend my time aggregrating various writing into a Devonthink Pro database, rather than the current rather haphazard scheme where it is split up between various software applications.
However to be honest, I suspect that little of this stuff is so dazzzling that it worth adding yet more faffing about organising it, instead of just actually writing anything.
Accordingly, I'll probably just push on for the moment as is.
Work wise, I have been tidying up from my old job, ready for a new job. It is amazing how brutal one can be about handing over and deleting stuff when you know that you are moving on. The fact that we had a change of government has also meant that a lot of stuff from before May, is really of no use/interest any more.
Anyway, new job on Monday, so new challenges ahead. I guess that new challenges keep you young, or like new children, just perpetually knackered.
I've decided that there needs to be some more humour in this blog, so if I can think of any good jokes then I'll be sure to put them in.
One thing that I have been thinking about recently is that often poetry can have a sort of internal melody, if you take a line like
tyger tyger burning bright
and you check where your tongue is as you pronounce each syllable, then it is
high low, high low, high low, high
so even beyond the simple rhyme that you can have between lines, you can have an internal repetition.
Of course this probably quite a poor example, in that it repeats the same word twice, but one of my favourite lines of my own is
we passed quiet cities in the night
which I would translate as
middle low, high middle, high middle, high middle high
which is a sequence of repeating descending sounds.
I'll not elaborate any further as it does rather hurt my head to figure this out, and there is unfortunately no easy way to cheat and look it all up on the internet. Anyway it is something that I thought that it might be worth noting.
Going round the usual circuit of my favourite topics, I have been spending more time with Devonthink Pro, and experimenting with DevonAgent.
By way of clarification Devonthink Pro is difficult to describe, it could support a paperless office, or act as a personal wiki, or even just a repository for writing. It does actually combine a number of features from shareware products (do they still call them that) that I actually use, and have paid for,
for example
I could use it as a sort of wiki - like voodoopad
or to provide a whole screen solution for typing - like Writeroom.
On the other hand, DevonAgent will intelligently aggregate the results of internet searches from a number of search engines, weeding out duplications. It has a variety of different scripts for searching. It was dreadfully slow, and seemed rather pointless, but I figured out that I had it on the wrong one of these scripts, there is a pull down available at the start of the search box. Once fixed, it seemed to run just dandy. What with the recent MacSanta and sundry other online software purchases though, I'm trying to cut down, so I'll just let the very generous free tryout period for DevonAgent play out, and see if I still want it then. I have discovered that even if you don't actually cut down on your expenditure, if you can just manage to postpone it for a while, then it is almost as effective.
So I am now wondering whether I should spend my time aggregrating various writing into a Devonthink Pro database, rather than the current rather haphazard scheme where it is split up between various software applications.
However to be honest, I suspect that little of this stuff is so dazzzling that it worth adding yet more faffing about organising it, instead of just actually writing anything.
Accordingly, I'll probably just push on for the moment as is.
Work wise, I have been tidying up from my old job, ready for a new job. It is amazing how brutal one can be about handing over and deleting stuff when you know that you are moving on. The fact that we had a change of government has also meant that a lot of stuff from before May, is really of no use/interest any more.
Anyway, new job on Monday, so new challenges ahead. I guess that new challenges keep you young, or like new children, just perpetually knackered.
Wednesday 2 January 2008
whither
Whither
whither technorati, whither google?
I used to rather enjoy typing in things that interested me into technorati and seeing what came up. However lately it seems to be filled with junk postings, and my own blog which might have appeared has not.
Like so many things, it seems to have failed to scale, or been a victim of its own success and been spammed out of usefulness. I'll maybe give it a few more tries, but it is at risk of going from one of my frequently used sites, to simply that I used to use.
Similarly things are increasingly difficult to actually find on google. There have been a few instances where I have failed to find what I'm looking for on google, despite no shortage of suggestions.
I have been experimenting with DevonAgent. I did download a whole slew of discounted software on the back of the MacSanta promotion. One of which was DevonThink Pro, however I did not get round to downloading DevonAgent. Basically DevonAgent is an enhanced web search engine. It does create a neat little graphic of interlinked themes, much like that electronic thesaurus that is around.
I'm not sure that it adds much value beyond google at the moment, but, I'll experiment a bit further and find out.
At the moment if I am doing a search for something, most of the time I can get by by using a site like Wikipedia, IMDB, or AMG.
Maybe we will need a new paradigm for internet searching, in case like technorati the old way of doing things has failed to scale or been spammed out of usefulness.
And while google is pretty much synonymous with internet searching, it has broadened its brand very substantially, I certainly use google mail, google maps, etc a lot, I maybe don't actually search as much as I used to. Well certainly not using google to search for everything.
While on the topic of 'whither', whither this blog.
the lesson with successful/popular blogs seems to be to do regular postings on a topic that will be of interest. So unless my thoughts are indeed a topic of interest to anyone, then this blog is likely to lurk around the blogosphere, and won't ever make me a fortune.
That said, I enjoy writing it, it is a useful discipline, and actually spending half an hour writing about something, certainly encourages you to think about it all the more. Blogging lets me develop and document my thinking. I guess then, that this year, 2008, will include more of the same, that is more stuff on completely different and random topics that catch my interest.
Last time I checked the google search box for the blog did not seem to work, but the one on the home page did, so something else to put on my tech support matching hat and anorak set for there then.
whither technorati, whither google?
I used to rather enjoy typing in things that interested me into technorati and seeing what came up. However lately it seems to be filled with junk postings, and my own blog which might have appeared has not.
Like so many things, it seems to have failed to scale, or been a victim of its own success and been spammed out of usefulness. I'll maybe give it a few more tries, but it is at risk of going from one of my frequently used sites, to simply that I used to use.
Similarly things are increasingly difficult to actually find on google. There have been a few instances where I have failed to find what I'm looking for on google, despite no shortage of suggestions.
I have been experimenting with DevonAgent. I did download a whole slew of discounted software on the back of the MacSanta promotion. One of which was DevonThink Pro, however I did not get round to downloading DevonAgent. Basically DevonAgent is an enhanced web search engine. It does create a neat little graphic of interlinked themes, much like that electronic thesaurus that is around.
I'm not sure that it adds much value beyond google at the moment, but, I'll experiment a bit further and find out.
At the moment if I am doing a search for something, most of the time I can get by by using a site like Wikipedia, IMDB, or AMG.
Maybe we will need a new paradigm for internet searching, in case like technorati the old way of doing things has failed to scale or been spammed out of usefulness.
And while google is pretty much synonymous with internet searching, it has broadened its brand very substantially, I certainly use google mail, google maps, etc a lot, I maybe don't actually search as much as I used to. Well certainly not using google to search for everything.
While on the topic of 'whither', whither this blog.
the lesson with successful/popular blogs seems to be to do regular postings on a topic that will be of interest. So unless my thoughts are indeed a topic of interest to anyone, then this blog is likely to lurk around the blogosphere, and won't ever make me a fortune.
That said, I enjoy writing it, it is a useful discipline, and actually spending half an hour writing about something, certainly encourages you to think about it all the more. Blogging lets me develop and document my thinking. I guess then, that this year, 2008, will include more of the same, that is more stuff on completely different and random topics that catch my interest.
Last time I checked the google search box for the blog did not seem to work, but the one on the home page did, so something else to put on my tech support matching hat and anorak set for there then.
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