Sunday 29 June 2008

still listening to GeekDad


Time just seems to be flying by these days. And the more things fly by, the more difficult it is to actually step back and think where you are going. You just get into a default position of reacting to stuff, rather than actually controlling your own agenda.


I suppose marketing plays on that, wrong footing you with buy now, time limited offer, so you allow yourself to be bounced into buying something you don't really need.

I have fallen prey to a couple of marketing efforts recently, the recent MacHeist offer on Parallels for half price, only available until the end of the month, and TalkTalk broadband available free for the next twenty years if you sign up now.

PARALLELS
I'd done a bit of research on Parallels before, so I just bought it, it was not much. However on looking at just how much a Vista/XP license would cost, and just how much of an anorak you would need to be to install and run Linux, I've not got any further. I'll maybe get a Linux install as a cover disc for one of the magazines, and I'll keep my eyes open for cheap Windows OS.

Never actually having been in the business of buying software for a PC, I foolishly assumed that it was all pretty cheap, as PC owners do tend to focus on the inordinate expense of running a Mac. However I was really struggling to find an Instal OS disk for less than £100, there seemed to be a million Amazon pages with slightly different versions, at widely different prices. And of course, you have to remember that however wonderful the OS actually is, it does not actually do very much, you still need to buy the actual software that you might want to run, the price for full set of Microsoft Office is at the kind of level that I would associate with the price of a second hand car.

Bearing in mind the fact that a load of CDs and a box cost virtually nothing, and practically every computer in the world seems to run Windows and Office, the surprise is that Bill Gates is only as rich as he is, he is not just sitting on a goldmine, it is like having won a whole set of licenses to print money, he is probably the one person that could afford to buy his own planet!

Being peevish, it is obvious that money does not buy taste, he certainly does not dress well, his offices look like somewhere that sell bulk office stationery, he has not acquired the aloof snooty sheen of academics or the meritocracy. However, as a Mac user, the script is to hate Bill Gates, but he is actually reasonably likeable, probably mildly autistic, and fiercely competitive, he has taken the intellectual stance of pursuing the game as ruthlessly as he could, and the fact that regulation failed to check him is a failing of legislation rather than him. I suspect that he simply does not look at things in terms of decent fair play, just as I cannot conceive of the meaning that a mathematician would see in numbers. Being different is not being bad.

TALKTALK
Having rambled on about Parallels, the other marketing blandishment that I fell prey to was someone phoning me to try and sell me free broadband for life with TalkTalk. As ever, the person was probably phoning from Dehli, and is probably a really lovely person, who just happens to be annoying me. Of course the offer sounded tempting, but it was difficult to get a word in edge-ways, and they were starting to tell me things that I knew were not true, like that there would be no problem curtailing my current broadband contract. You kind of get a feel for when people know less about something than you do, though they don't always have the sense to talk less simply because the know less.

Anyway having had to politely hang up, family stuff going on, the poor guy still grinding out the sales pitch, I checked out the reviews on that interweb thingy. I suppose that Broadband reviews will always tend towards the extreme, this service sucks so hard, that it is creating an anomaly in the space time continuum, stole my kidneys and had sex with my gerbil. However even by these hyperbolic standards the reviews for TalkTalk seemed ‘mixed’, in fact I do rather wonder if the few good reviews came from Charlie Dunstone and his immediate family.

Getting broadband running is about as much fun as doing open heart surgery on yourself, I think that I can find it in myself to pass up on the chance of free broadband, with some of the worst reviews going.


Anyway, having wibbled on about nothing, time to go find something useful to do.
I'm posting the odd photo to Flickr, and starting to think about what makes a good photo, basically it only has a few things it in, so it is not a distracting mess of detail.
Still listening to Geekdad,
....

PS - lame joke
why did the vicar have a Mars bar on Sunday morning?

because a Mars a day, helps you work, rest and pray.

PPS
I had to explain that to my daughter Megan, still not sure that she got it

Saturday 21 June 2008

the geek shall inherit the earth


A week of interesting diversions, been listening to the Geekdad podcasts, because, well, I suppose, I am, a geek dad. Though probably not quite fully signed up to all the cultural reference points. I do not have box sets of all the Buffy series, though I did watch them all, and I only have one copy of BladeRunner, but overall pretty geeky.

Also, pretty obviously, I'm a dad.

I've been listening to the blogs back to back, so I've just caught up to 2008, which is feeling a bit more contemporary.


I've also just bought the latest issue of Monocle, I've been watching the podcast for a while, but the city special is the first actual issue of the magazine that I have bought. It is a good read, though like the Economist, there is just so much of it you feel deterred from buying it because you cannot manage to finish it. An entertaining read, though all rather silly in that all the readers are looking at these pricey architect commissioned houses, while commuting back home to their semi's. But I rather like getting ideas from these magazines, and then trying to recreate them myself, a bit of harmless escapism.

It is intriguing to read about what they reckon makes for a great city, albeit for the rich global nomad, more interested in eating out than getting a weekly shop or something to do with the kids.

Consistent features seem to include bicycles, eating out, diversity of shops, arts, tolerance, genuine mixtures of people, good design/architecture.

Not mentioned explicitly but implicit, would be a welcoming attitude. I do wonder if we are all feeling too emancipated now to work in service professions, seeing them as menial. I think that there is a nobility in any job done well, and we would all do well to increase our civility, manners and tolerance. For the very rich stealthy wealthy, the whole world is open to them, so they can easily enough decant following some bad experience. For those of us who are less mobile, it is civility that makes our cities tolerable.


Why I don't like Doctor Who anymore - nowadays Doctor Who is written as a soap opera that happens to be set in a science fiction setting. However it is the set characters who drive the plots. Note how seldom they ever visit anywhere that is particularly alien, the lack of genuinely different looking aliens, the lack of compelling ideas in the plots, the xenophobia. All in all I'm getting bored of Doctor Who, so will probably give up on it, save for the odd Stephen Moffat episode, as he remains an inventive and amusing writer.

Austerity starts to bite - our old fixed term mortgage has ended, and suddenly we are paying nearly an extra hundred a month for what we are getting. It would be good to be able to invest more in the depressed stock market, but the routine outgoings are as ever non-negotiable. Time to hunker down and weather the recession as best we can.

Sunday 15 June 2008

The Maules

Why write this blog entry;-
I have been reading Miracles of Life, an autobiography of sorts, of JG Ballard. I've been reading JG Ballard since secondary school, and even wrote a dissertation on him when I was in sixth year. Needless to say, that was either right at the start of the eighties or even at the end of the seventies, so he was not as well known in those days. Having read so much of his fiction, reading now about his life, is strangely informing.

However, despite these digressions my point is, he has written about the people that he came across and their impact on him. I suppose, looking back on your life, this is an incredibly natural thing to do. But in our hurry we seldom do look back, or think about the people we have come across and the positive impact they have had on us. He describes a family he knew and their relaxed approach to family life, combined with a decency and a love for each other, and others more widely. This family was in part a model for how he chose to bring up his own children later in life.

Of course, I could write at vast lengthy about all the people who have made a positive impact on my life, but thinking of my life as a young child, I was particularly struck by an elderly couple that moved in across from us, the Maules. It was so long ago that I don't remember much, in terms of appearance, I really don't know, they were probably grey or white haired, certainly not broad Scots, in my minds eye just a stereotypical elderly couple who smiled and made people happy. They must have enjoyed the attention of children, I was one of four, and we certainly were not the only young children in the street, but they would make us tablet with peanuts in it. We were too shy to mention that we all disliked peanuts, so we patiently took them out. I must have had some conversation where the word Lauriston came up, for they gave me a postcard and a page torn from a book, with a poem Lock the gate Lauriston. Tearing a page from a book is something that still shocks me now. Where we were, you might find brown red stones on the beach, well worn, but with some sort of whirl of other material across a face. Pretty and unusual. They had collected such stones, and set then in cement, in a little corner.

They struck me as the kindest of neighbours, but it was also their curiosity and creativeness. Here were adults that could be whimsically creative, who took a gentle interest in the buzz of no doubt tiresome children, people with a real interest in things and a love of sharing it.

When it is our very memories that shape our sense of reality, it is disconcerting just how partial and fallible they are. But I'm sitting here now, thinking of the Maules all those years ago, of their contentment and the pleasure they took in the things around them. I suppose that amidst the rather conventional, and aspirational neighbours, who were by and large too busy for us children, they were rather eccentric, but they were kind and gentle. With luck, when we see something we admire, it might sow the seed of something similar in ourselves.

Saturday 7 June 2008

swimming with rabbits

Somehow the power was cut to some railway signals at a key junction, so on Wednesday evening all the trains were cancelled.

All a bit galling, as my normal train was the last one to leave on time, but I had already missed it, picking up some watches that I had dropped off at a jewellers for new batteries.

First of all we all got on a train, then we were told to get off, but a replacement train was on the departure board without a platform associated with it. Then that too vanished from the board. Figuring that nothing much was going to happen any time soon, I got a hot pie for dinner, and picked up a complaints leaflet. Someone I worked with appeared, then headed off to catch a bus home. Still nothing much happening, trains appearing for departure but with no associated platform, then when they were due quietly vanishing from the board.

It was a wonderful sunny evening, which always cheers you up, so I just hung about waiting. I suppose I could have got annoyed, and to be honest if the assembled multitude had decided to start a riot, I probably would have been in there somewhere at the back, but I just found somewhere quiet to stand and let the time pass. A young drunken couple came by squabbling so I moved position, and someone asked me where I was going, and as we were both heading in the same direction, he was keen to share a taxi. The conversation quickly attracted a few other interested parties and by the time that we had got the the taxi rank there were five of us, ready to split a taxi fare, taking us in our various directions. Probably not a cheap option, but we were getting dangerously close to when The Apprentice started, and different people had plans afoot to pop the cork on their different bottles of wine and watch it.

So we chatted about the Apprentice, and one of us was a engineer from Canada, and painting when you have children, and swimming with sharks, though I preferred the idea of swimming with rabbits. And all in all a pleasant ride home, with people I had never met before and probably won't again.

Delighted that something so unexpected and enjoyable could be plucked from such circumstances, impressed by the person who had the confidence to gather us altogether, and surprised how much we all had in common, people who would silently commute past each other without a comment, none so different from each other, but all our own humour and stories.

And the lesson of this all, if you can be at all times relaxed and approachable, then opportunities will arise when you least expect them to. A smile can take you further than the stoutest pair of shoes.

Sunday 1 June 2008

in sleeping we surrender ourselves to strong currents

A week of this and that. There seems to have been a run of public holidays. So, in theory, I should be catching up with the paperwork and such-like. Fine in theory, but in practice, I can always find vastly more to do, than I can find hours and energy to do it with.

I have also decided to mix up what I'm doing a bit more. So, rather than spend the whole day doing the garden, I'll do the garden upto lunch-time, and then do something else. I'm not sure whether it is more efficient breaking up the time like this, but it does sharpen you up, if you know that you only have a fairly finite amount of time to spend on something. A day seems pretty vast at the start, and it is only towards the end that it becomes clear how little a day's work can achieve with some tasks.

I have been lucky, in that I have recently had some of that weather that is so good, that I feel that it would be a shame to be doing anything else but being out in the garden.

So I have been excavating the fine plants that I am growing, from in amongst the vast and profligate weeds that are often dwarfing them. One part of me thinks that I should be working systematically to a laid down scheme of work. One part of me thinks that I should just dad about doing whatever catches my fancy. I'm currently steering a middle course, perhaps slightly on the dadding about side. There is always something to be said for doing whatever happens to catch my fancy, rather than working to some sensible but uninspiring list.

Some plants have been successfully excavated, and the garden now looks a bit more like a garden again.

Offering a couple of observations
• at this time of year, a good gardener always has vastly more to do, than he has time for
• the perfect garden is one that is just big enough to keep you busy when you want to be out gardening, but not so big that you have to go out when you don't feel like it.
• the only gardener who has does not have weeds in his garden, is the one that does a LOT of weeding.

Otherwise, I've been playing about with my new digital camera. Much impressed. I would love to have more time for just playing about with digital cameras, and websites, and Fontstruct, and reading the Sunday papers, and ...

If I am off during the week, and have to go shopping for something, there are all these really miserable folk there, really really miserable. I can't imagine that I would ever run out of things to do, or end up grumpily wandering round garden centres. There is so far too much to be doing.

Just finished yet another book about the Shakers, this one on the Shaker Garden. I do like the Shakers, doubtless pandering to my obsessive neatness.