have just checked my Hotmail; no email from boy. hmm, may have to downgrade to the alternative present ...

MY FEET HURT MY FEET HURT MY FEET HURT!
Also my head, my neck and my eyes, but mostly my feet.
Hong Kong is a wonderful city to walk around, but it's hell on the feet.
Plus I smell; 85 per cent humidity and polyester T-shirts. 'nuff said.

At home, I'm on the short side; in Hong Kong, I'm average to tall.
The Hong Kong people seem to be gradually losing the command of English the British instilled in them - in the antique shop where I found the expensive present I'm going to buy my boy (he has the URL for this, but I'm sure he never looks at it) the girl, wo is selling antiques to tourists, had almost no English. The street signs are descending into electrical device instruction manual English "under working" for "work in progress", that kind of thing.

worst of all, they seem to be changing from walking on the left of the footpath (they drive on the left, as do Australians, at least at home) to walking on the right. And they're making the change intermittently. Very confusing.

bath now, work tomorrow.

did I mention my feet hurt?

this may be goodbye for a week - but I doubt it. somewhere in the madness of Hong Kong hotel room Web connections and the press room at the W3C conference, between listening to really shit-hot people strut their stuff, cobbling together stories and seeking out the very, very best yum cha and discount fashion shops, I will succumb to the urge to blog.
Leaving/on a jet plane ....

Over to the left, in my new sidebar bit, just over the Blogger logo, you'll see a small rainbow-coloured cube. It's my new, FREE, sitemeter! All this good stuff; stats, referrals, domain information, exit sites; and all FREE!!! You have to love the Web. It's so generous.

Thursday morning riding in to work; the wind was blowing, the trees were falling apart, leaving little yellow pieces of themselves all over the road, even the normally even roar of the traffic one block over on Nicholson Street was fragmented by the moving air. It seemed like nothing was still or whole. At the child care centre, a little boy stopped, up to his ankles in leaves, gaping at the swirling crowd of pixies around his face. And his mother called: "Hurry up."

AARRRR, NO FAIR! Why do all the good designers get the goodies? The Blogger template contest has no "weakest html skills" category. So I have no hope.

breast blog

‚Ü‚½�ð“ú‚©‚ç�Aƒ}ƒCƒpƒ\‚Ì’²Žq‚ªˆ«‚¢�B–¾‚ç‚©‚Ƀ�ƒ‚ƒŠ‚ª•s‘«‚µ‚Ä‚¢‚é‚悤‚Å�A‚Ô‚¿‚Ô‚¿—Ž‚¿‚é�B�¡ƒnƒCƒŠƒ~ƒbƒcƒy�[ƒW‚̃}ƒCƒi�[ƒ`ƒFƒ“ƒW‚ð‚µ‚Ä‚é“r’†‚Å�A‚©‚Ȃ肤‚Á‚Æ‚¨‚µ‚¢�B‘S‘R�i‚Ü‚È‚¢�B

‚È‚É‚à‚â‚Á‚Ä‚È‚¢‚Ì‚É‚È‚ñ‚Å‹}‚É‚±‚ñ‚È‚É‚È‚Á‚Ä‚µ‚Ü‚Á‚½‚Ì‚¾‚낤�B�S“–‚½‚肪‚ ‚é�l‚Í‹³‚¦‚Ä‚­‚¾‚³‚¢�B‚Ù‚Á‚Æ‚¢‚½‚ç‚È‚¨‚é‚©‚È�B

- no, I don't understand it either

this is sick. must sleep. must post one last link. Joey Ramone had good taste in music. Here's his top ten list

I bet this appears twice: posts still not appearing on the page, despite showing up on my editing page, mostly.
I have a lot of profound thoughts to share, but instead I'll mention something that occurred to me as I was falling asleep this afternoon: words ending in "imp" rarely denote strength or manliness: WIMP CHIMP LIMP PIMP and BRING OUT THE GIMP.

(Damn I'm glad I learned to touch type. It's 9.29 pm here and a work night and I'm almost asleep, but I can close my eyes and blog at the same time.)

I have a lot of profound thoughts to share, but instead I'll just mention something that occurred to me as I was falling asleep this afternoon: words ending in "imp" rarely denote strength or manliness. WIMP CHIMP PIMP LIMP and BRING OUT THE GIMP.

despite being updated every minute, I'm finding that certain other bloggers are online at about the same time as me. names such as "Whee, I'm a dolphin, ek-ek-ek-ek-ek" do tend to stick in the mind as well. of course.

darn posts aren't appearing. I'm sure they will eventually, but I want to play with my template some more (slowly but surely building up some really cool blogs for my loyal audience, see the bottom of the page), and I can't tell if what I've done is brilliant or sucks. Or both.

a bible studies blog.
Just like Ned Flanders, only not funny.

A luddite blog

too much to do: my list for today, my "day off":
Write cover story for next week's paper
Read a week's worth of Uni course notes
Swim
20 bike ride (done)
aerobics (done)
Ring Karin
Blog
File threatening pile of papers looming over my desk
wash clothes
Ring Mum
write various letters related to my campaign to stop my next-door neighbours building a couple of huge apartments where there is currently a lovely tree
convince Bilbo he really does want to be brushed, no really.
relax.

Today I am wearing my New Boots. They are black, come to the top of my calf, have high, solid heels and make me feel as sexy as hell - kind of like Barbarella without the metallic trim.
In Dublin, every single female was wearing a version of them, so of course I had to buy some. I'm aware that by late winter they will make me look like a fashion victim here in Melbourne, because the shops are already full of similar things. But today they have turned my three-year-old wool tunic dress into a kind of 60's funky shift, and my unwashed hair into lank slacker style ...

one of my favourite places in Melbourne is the Queen Victoria Market, a city food and general stuff market that sells everything from organic apples to whole dead sheep to cheap trashy shoes.
I love to stop there on the way to work, park my pushbike and grab the week's supply of desk munchies, then prolong the morning just that extra 15 minutes by buying a caffe latte from the best bratwurst shop in Melbourne, probably Australia.
It's probably 2.5 metres wide and the queue is often five people deep, right across the span of the shop. The counter is white marble, cracked and stained a soft yellow in the centre from all the coffees that have been set down there. Once it would have been new and shiny, without tiny particles of food in every mm-wide crack, without stains, without character.
I suppose as I get older, all the wonderful places like this, like Brunetti's Italian cake shop in Carlton, like Pelligrini's the coffee mecca of Bourke St (uptown Melbourne) will go along with their elderly migrant proprietors .... at least we have new places, Moroccan restaurants, Asian fast-food joints, opening all the time. but it takes a long time to get so good at that one thing you do as these places are.

Hey, blog spam!

Why is it that this reminds me of the generic "you sound really cool, drop me a line" emails I used to get when I posted my profile on RSVP, that well-known Australian virtual smoky bar?

>You have an awesome blog... ive' attatched an award for you to this
email..
please post it and check out my site

http://www.punkblog.cjb.net


thank you and goodbye

Attachment: LovleySite.bmp (95k) -- View Attachment

Notice: Attachments are automatically scanned for viruses

/end spam/

I bet he/she didn't even read my blog!!! This is what I get for tarting myself about in the blog directories, I suppose.

the bitmap was an award/link to the blogger's site. Their site carries ads. 'nuf said.

I've given up on getting a powder-metallic-blue MX-5 (Miata), and my new car of choice is a pristine purple Valiant charger.
Can't find a Web image of one, but they're 2-door, 1970's, glossy deep purple and ideal for cruisin' with the boys on a
Saturday night. Not that I do much of that...

ooh, I'm so angry about this.

my virtual reply to this fucker:

I'm not defending myself. I've notified my editor and will correct the mistake. I'm objecting to your tone, which is rude and completely in contrast to everyone else who has called or emailed me about this, as well as implying I had deliberately omitted information to bolster a story. I'm not "hiding behind" the opinion thing. But it was ABOUT WHY PEOPLE DON'T USE E-COMMERCE. The Melbourne Uni system, on that gauge, still sucks.

If anyone's attacking in this exchange, it's you.

My God this will be a long post. But short of flaming back this rude person, the best outlet I can think of is to blog the whole thing.

It was the "Jenny, Jenny" thing that got me. Patronising, know-it-all fucker. Funnily enough, I got a polite call from someone else telling me about it, called him back and had a very nice chat, and will plug his business in the subsequent story. If I could say one thing to Michael, who persists in using my first name despite my refusal to do the same to him, it would be a) fuck off and b) insulting your correspondents is not a good way to run a business. That's two things.

My flame war:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Heffernan [mailto:mike@unilink.com.au]
> Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 2:21 PM
> To: jsinclair@theage.fairfax.com.au
> Subject: RE: A bits and pieces approach
>
>
> Jenny,
>
> Apart from subscribing to the "don't spoil a good story with
> the facts and,
> when found out, remember attack is the best form of defence"
> school, you
> hide behind the article as an opinion piece (which really
> means anything
> goes). Give me a break.
>
> Have a good weekend.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jenny Sinclair [mailto:jsinclair@theage.fairfax.com.au]
> Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 1:06 PM
> To: 'Michael Heffernan'
> Subject: RE: A bits and pieces approach
>
>
>
> Mr Heffernan,
>
> I think you miss my point; the article was an opinion piece
> about why people
> don't use e-commerce systems.
>
> If, in the course of my work, I had taken your suggestion and
> discovered the
> online site, it wouldn't have made the slightest difference
> to my experience
> as a student, which was woeful. The article would then have
> criticised
> Melbourne Uni for not publicising the service. I would stand
> by the comment
> "not being given an electronic option at all." The manager of student
> administration takes the view that the article was perfectly
> valid under the
> circumstances, btw.
>
> You might want to re-read your original email to me, if
> you're wondering why
> I don't seem very open to your suggestions.
>
> Jenny Sinclair
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Michael Heffernan [mailto:mike@unilink.com.au]
> > Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 1:43 PM
> > To: jsinclair@theage.fairfax.com.au
> > Subject: RE: A bits and pieces approach
> >
> >
> > Jenny,
> >
> > Thanks for your reply. I have passed your comments onto the Bookshop
> > management and no doubt they will ensure the site is given
> > more publicity,
> > although my understanding is that some 30-40% of students use
> > the site for
> > their textlists. Incidentally I'm not looking for a
> > retraction, that is
> > matter for the university, but I strongly suggest more
> > research in future.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jenny Sinclair [mailto:jsinclair@theage.fairfax.com.au]
> > Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 9:52 AM
> > To: 'Michael Heffernan'
> > Subject: RE: A bits and pieces approach
> >
> >
> >
> > Dear Mr Heffernan,
> >
> > Thank you for the information. The link on the SIS is headed
> > "books", not
> > "textbooks" and in six years as a part-time student at
> > Melbourne University,
> > I have never seen a notice drawing my attention to this
> > facility, despite
> > frequent use of the bookshop, the SIS, the library catalogue
> > and handbooks
> > online and the university-mandated email system. Nor does
> > the bookroom have
> > signs up, that I have seen, telling students it's available -
> > and believe
> > me, I have spent enough time in queues there that any sign
> > would have drawn
> > my attention.
> >
> > To reach the online shop, it takes six clicks from the front
> > page as well as
> > entering a student number and PIN. Until the fourth click,
> there is no
> > indication that online purchase is possible; the pages simply say
> > "booklist".
> >
> > The university's media office has been in touch since my
> > article, and was
> > unaware of the online facility; she originally raised the
> > possibility of my
> > talking to the general manager of student administration
> > about "(a) focus
> > group on these issues," so it seems the administration is
> > largely unaware of
> > it as well.
> >
> > I imagine that if I, and the several hundred other students
> > at the bookshop
> > that day, had been given the benefit of one sign, or a single
> > email, many of
> > us would have been using the system instead of queuing up. If
> > you have them,
> > I'd be interested to see figures on use of the system
> compared to the
> > bookshop.
> >
> > We will certainly correct the information in the next edition
> > of IT that we
> > can; this may be the 24/4 or 1/5. There are two ways to do
> > this; a short
> > correction written by us, or we can run your
> > letter as amended below, which requires your permission. I am
> > also talking
> > to the university's media office about what they would like
> > to do about
> > publicising the site.
> >
> > I appreciate that you may not be responsible for the
> > bookroom's e-commerce
> > strategy. If you are, I would like to offer you some advice,
> > as it seems to
> > be the order of the day; attracting customers also requires
> > that they be
> > made aware of a facility.
> >
> > The tone of your email to me implies that I was somehow
> > negligent in not
> > knowing of the facility, or even deliberately obscured it;
> I refuse to
> > accept that implication. I would suggest that an unpublicised
> > facility is as
> > bad as none at all; even a call to the university's media
> office would
> > clearly not have unearthed the site.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Jenny Sinclair
> >
> > Journalist
> > The Age I.T.
> >
> > ph: 61 3 9601 3204
> > fax: 61 3 9601 2960
> >
> > jsinclair@theage.fairfax.com.au
> >
> > www.it.fairfax.com.au
> > www.theage.com.au
> >
> >

> >Jenny, Jenny,
> >
> > > Why spoil a good story with the facts?
> > >
> > > As a student there are several ways to buy the books you
> > > require, one of
> > > which is through the university web site.
> > >
> > > The main university web site www.unimelb.edu.au will direct
> > you to the
> > > student information system and then to textbooks. By
> > > providing you student
> > > id and pin this system will extract your relevant course
> > > codes and access
> > > the text list required. It is then simply a matter of ticking
> > > off those you
> > > wish to purchase and this is prepared for you by the
> > > bookshop. Alternatively
> > > you can go straight to the bookshop
> > > http://books.mub.unimelb.edu.au/. This
> > > system has been in operation for some years now and is the
> > > main source of
> > > obtaining book lists.
> > >
> > > My interest is only that we provide the framework of this
> > > e-commerce system
> > > to many university bookshops throughout Australia and that
> > > you may want to
> > > let your readers know the REAL facts.
> > >
> > >
> > > Mike Heffernan
> > > Director
> > > UniLink Data Systems
> > >9-11 Hamilton Place
Mt Waverley Vic 3149
Tel: +61 3 9888 1077
Fax: +61 3 9888 1879
> > >
> >
> >
>
>

A bits and pieces approach

IT2 - REAR VIEW

Byline: JENNY SINCLAIR

So, why hasn't e-commerce taken off in Australia? It may not be the consumers fault writes Jenny Sinclair.

Why are analysts from companies like Accenture saying that online retailing is still an uncertain bet?

Could it be that retailers just aren't getting it right?

Sure, there are a lot of factors in running a good business, online or otherwise.

Staff problems, inefficient systems, and poor marketing can all bring down a venture that seemed like a good idea at the time, even one that's very well run.

And sometimes, a perfect opportunity for online selling goes begging.

Let me show you a sentence that made me very angry. ``In general, moving bits is immeasurably more efficient than moving people and goods. The savings show up in ... shortening of time spent in travelling.''

It's not the rather sensible sentiments that made steam come out of my ears. It was the fact that I read that statement while almost literally trapped in a half-hour queue at a bookshop.

Each year, the University of Melbourne publishes customised course readers for many subjects. The readers which are essential, and can't be bought anywhere else go on sale at the university bookroom around the start of semester, along with more generic reading materials and specially stocked textbooks.

And every year, hundreds of students spend a total of thousands of hours queuing up at that single bookstore. They're not there to browse, or to take pleasure in the aesthetic experience of the shelves of fine books, they're there to fill a list, buy and get out. If you don't get in early, the course readers and some books often sell out, so there's nothing for it but to pick a quiet(ish) time and plunge in during Week One.

The poor old bookstore does its best; it runs eight registers on extended hours during the first two weeks, unlike some other administrative areas. But the staff, and the store itself, simply can't cope with the numbers.

It's not a big space to start with, and when it's packed with shipping pallets of extra books and flocks of sweaty students on a 30-degree-plus day, it's not a pretty sight.

As I shuffled forward, steaming, and resisting the urge to turn and slap the sniffling student behind me who kept poking his armful of books into my back, I pondered the ironies of reading about New Economy efficiencies while mired down by the old economy.

This is an institution that requires its students to create a university email address for official correspondence, so they must have some idea about electronic efficiencies (although until very recently the interface for those addresses was a tortuous techies' creation).

And the university handbook, timetables and some basic administration functions are now online. So would it be that much harder to set up even a textbook-only online store?

It wouldn't have to be whiz-bang. Even when I was at secondary school in the late 1970's, it was possible to submit a hard-copy booklist and pick up the parcel a few days later, and I'd settle for an electronic version of that. Text downloadable over broadband to my reading tablet would be nice, but no one expects miracles.

Maybe I've been spoiled. My few experiences with really good online customer service have shown me that it can work, that it can save me heaps of time and lugging around of physical objects.

Sadly, just as often I've been put off by difficult software, lack of information, or, as in this case, not being given an electronic option at all.

While two out of three online stores don't respond to a query/complaint about their returns policy at Christmas time (and the other third does so in an offhand way), while some online bank customers have to wait until the next day to see their new balances, while airlines provide email addresses for service requests that they then flatly ignore, and while institutions at Melbourne University's level don't bother coming up with a simple electronic solution to their student's and staff's aggravation and wasted time, you can't blame the average punter for staying in the real world.

Jenny Sinclair is a part-time student at the University of Melbourne. The quote on movement of bits is from E-topia: Our Town Tomorrow, by William Mitchell.
------------------------------
Publication: The Age
Publication date: 17-4-2001
Edition: Late
Page no: 3
Section: Computers
Length: 734
------------------------------

don't know what happened below. prolly my crappy http attempts. anyway, the man who also links to Americans for Purity, the Web's leading anti-masturbation site, can be found here

I'm always pinching good sites from other blogs, but this home-grown Australian sceptic, debunker and collector of really, really amazingly dumb sites was my own discovery: Bonsai Kitten, along comes ManBeef.com. You read right. One assumes that they are joking ...

I did not write this. But I wish I had. From what I can tell, this bloggeris a programmer or some kind of tech. He can write:

"My thoughts on love
I want firecrackers and rollercoasters. I want it all to swirl around me in a glorious whirlpool and I want it to happen right now. I want love to kick my ass; I need love to throw me on the bed and take me right there. I am not going to play hard to get. You will not be confused about your feelings or have trouble figuring out what you want. It will all fit together like a puzzle that I finally figured out. I couldn't do it before because all along it was a picture of you. I don't want to have any doubts, I just want you - I want it all - I want it to be the most perfect solution to that nagging problem I have grappled with since I first fell for Kellie in the second grade.

I do not want to "hook up." A woman and I are nothing so vulgar as train cars or trailers who will be joined for a while. I want a window into a glowing, beautiful world that is created when our eyes lock, when you kiss me, when I touch you. I refuse to chose my words carefully; I just want to speak and have you know, have you understand, have you share my unquenchable passion for living."

there should be a word for: putting things out on the nature strip or footpath in the vain hope that they will somehow be taken away by people in the night. as in:
"What did you do with that smelly old mattress from the shed?"
"Oh, I Frithelstocked it".
(Frithestock being a town name I stole from this list of daft place names.)

... and all that activity (apparently 2.2 updates per day per "active user", whatever active means), has led to Blogger selling a licence to Trellix. (Press release here)
Now I've never heard of Trellix, but they appear to have money, and money means Blogger and Blogspot will survive. And possibly without having to send us all annoying "upgrade now" messages like Namezero, or begging for dollars for special ad-free membership, like Salon Magazine.
What was that about ideas whose time has come?

just testing if this recently updated thing WORKS...and fifty seconds later I can confirm it does... but only for about that long. I started second from the top and in three refreshes I was off the page ... there must be so many fingers clickin' away out there feeding Ev's voracious database of nothing in particular. about an update every five seconds, I guess.

done, sort of. Yeehah! stay tuned for mass insertion of images, mail links etc. Expect to see them at the bottom of the page until I find a better template to steal.

oh my God! It worked! look, just ignore the links and email address and icons at the bottom of this page. they're stolen, and I'll remove them.
this is what happens when you f- around with templates from someone else's really cool site. He had a great image of a noir blond as well, and his site is - oh hell, I've lost the actual link. stay right there, I have to go take all those links out...

Blogger was down on Friday and I got so strung out from lack of a fix that I wrote this on my Geocities web site:

So pathetic has my need to blog become that Blogger only has to be down for an hour and I've spent US $19.95(about $459,000 Australian) on buying jennysinclair.com from Namezero, and resorted to this tired old page. If I was really clever I could create an script that would get the files from my blog and show them here, but this is Geocities, and it's not for people who want to use actual code. so here's a link to: my fabulous blog.

It's true. now I own my own name, plus ratava.com (at which you'll find nothing). I have my (thank you) Blogspot site, jennysinclair.com (which used to show my geocities site, but now shows this blog, and ratava.net, which shows my site at my local ISP, Vicnet, but not for long, because both ratava.net and ratava.org are Namezero sites and I can't afford to buy them. there's nothing at ratava.com because I can't figure out a really cheap way to get the name hosted and redirected. it was a lame idea anyway - but I was so pleased to get an actual word in .com, and one that's not even in the dictionary yet at that.

but I did work out how to use ftp. that's what I like about Blogger - it's got me over that initial posting hump, and I can dor more when I'm ready.

er. drove four hours on Saturday to spend four hours with my nephew, mum and dad and Andrew at the local pub near the farm my nephew's working on. Remembered why I couldn't stand country life; all the women and kids at one table, the men at the bar. no, it wasn't that bad really.
despite all the road-death warnings, people stilldrive like fools.
an undeveloped thought: do the really rich and really poor have more in common with each other than they do with the people in between? like lots of free time, guaranteed health care, and in many cases, a kind of immunity to worrying about the law/what other people think because they've either nothing to lose, or enough lawyers/cash to cushion them?

Yay Easter! Yay the price of petrol going up and up as everyone packs their cars to go on holiday! Yay grumpy queues at the supermarket - and that's only in the carpark! Yay newspapers and TV schedules full of religious stupidness!
But also for pumpkin-harvesting time (13 @ least) and for the shiny orange persimmons on the tree in our backyard and for cool sunny autumn mornings ...

and for five days off work, and finishing my essay early (not well, but early) and for being able to take a Sunday afternoon nap.

ps: RIP Harry Secombe.

I'm reading the cluetrain manifesto and for a breathless new-age book about the Web, it's not bad.
all about how the Web undermines business bullshit and how real people matter. a bit bloggy, in fact. however, the pronouncements that old-style hierarchical systems are dead are premature, methinks.
I also think I might be getting a cold. bummer.

Now this is sharing. MIT will put almost all of its course material up on the Web for the Free World to play with. nice one, guys.

as I procrastinate my cybersocieties essay, I present an example of a self-reinforcing loop. This site has a popularity ratings page for blogs etc, with slashdot at # 1 (it's a geeky forum). At number three is the more interesting memepool, which in turn has lots of other links to good stuff (is lists of links to lists of links really what Tim Berners-Lee really had in mind when he invented the Web?). Anyway, my point is that by being at #3, memepool has a pretty good chance of staying at #3, especially when everyone who goes there goes "woh, that's cool" and sticks up a link to them.
this is a good thing. but in some systems, selecting for popularity is a bad thing, banishing clever but not terribly accessibe stuff to the dark, dusty corners. You know, that worthy, insightful stuff like Joyce and Heidegger that is influential and important, but no one ever actually reads (I've read a little H, but can't get past page 50 of Ulysses). If there wasn't quality control as well as popularity ratings, we'd all end up watching Baywatch for moral guidance.

I never did get around to giving the other side of the editing versus open access to a medium argument, did I? I seem to be coming down hard on the side of Authority. it's a worry.

another weekend, another wedding. they're starting to blend into one, to the point where the celebrant at yesterdays outdoor-alternative-lifestyle-experimental-farm-setting wedding looked and sounded exactly the same as the one at the outdoor-historic-upper-class-suburb wedding. well, she actually was the same one. yesterday's was the first one to make me cry, though. Michelle and Mike are an intensely literary pair (I won't say couple, b/c as various conversations at the reception established, one can never know what makes other couples a couple) and wrote their own vows. "Seek to love, more than to be loved, to understand, more than to be understood". sob. so sweet. Plus Michelle's fine 12-year-old son (as tall as her) who gave her away, and their adorable two-year-old getting about in a sky-blue party frock. six and a half years ago when another couple I know announced (while wearing Abba-style jumpsuits, but that's another story) that they were going to get married, I didn't believe them. No one I knew "got married" then. But Generation X is getting older and having little x's and besides, weddings are just damn good fun.

OK, we can stop right here. No, I mean it. Get back in your boxes, all of you. George, say sorry. Give 'em a few million for their stupid plane. And you Chinese, grow up. Of course they're going to spy on you, you're the most populous nation in the world. Anything, anything but this truly unbelievable extract from the Washington Times: "War is not inevitable, but neither is peace." War? WAR?? Who the hell said anything about war? If you're even hinting at mass destruction of each others' nations, you've gone way too far already.
I learned something from motorcyle riding; always expect the worst. My instructor told me that if I think a car's going to fail to give way, brake hard THEN, not ten seconds later when it could be too late. You can always take your hand (foot) off the brake if the car does give way. The more drastic the consequences of an accident, the more panicky you should be early, and to me, war between the US and China is a pretty nasty two-car pileup.
So stop.

Here's what those losers at netbroadcast.com had to say about my complaint about their fascist popup ads. apparently it's my fault, not theirs, and I should spend an hour fixing my browser. fuckers.



"If you are receiving pop-up ads, it is possible that you have downloadeda
Browser Enhancement program similar to the one used by GoHip.com. Youmay
want to try their Browser Removal program which can be downloaded attheir
website www.gohip.com.Click on the "Customer Service" link on their website.
Click on "Removal Instructions"Follow the instructions on their web page.
Thank you,NetBroadcaster Customer Supportsupport@netbroadcaster.com
www.netbroadcaster.com
"The Internet's premiere source for streaming entertainment" "


"sorry, we'll never do it again" would have sufficed.

why should my marginalia remained confined to my uni notebook? No, I want to share.
Learning about how computers actually work; all that millions-of-times-a-second processing of on/off states which translate into code which translates into languages which translates into programs which represents aspects of the human world: and I wonder, would computers be happy if they did become conscious? At whatever speed they were "aware", the basic work sounds awfully like moving rocks from one end of a field to the other. What if they became conscious, but lacking in will? It would be rather like being a zombie, trapped inside your body watching it perform the most repetitive and boring tasks imaginable. poor things ...

I found that last one at Boingboing, a pleasing mix of writing and good links, btw.
It would be, though. One if its authors helped found Wired Online.

This guy likes to write letters. My favourite is the one asking Greyhound about their disability policy re: his difficult priapism. But you may also like the job application to the FBI, or his letter to Andy Rooney asking him to authenticate a jar of, um, urine ...

Office grievances: went to a party on Saturday night; it was quite fun, music, people from work, drinks, cake, chatting on the balcony. Nothing too dramatic. The hostess came in to work this morning and told us that her neighbour had exploded with abuse over a little stairwell mess the next morning. We agreed the neighbour was unreasonable. Then the hostess went and told some other people. Same agreement. There's something there should be a word for - seeking the support of enough third party people to make one feel justified in one's sense of outrage. It has nothing to do with "backing up" the hostess against the neighbour - it's all about getting her level of righteousness up again. "The guy next door parked me in this morning and I was so angry I had to tell SEVEN people before I got my full dose of Upigny".
(Upigny is a place in Belgium. I liked the name. If you missed my first post on this, see Douglas Adams' The Meaning of Liff or a list of names here


You know you're really a geek when you leave your mobile phone earpiece in when you're not on a call. While you're walking down the street.

Why do people say "sorry" when they have no reason to be? In the supermarket, in the street, at blind corners in the office, I often have to stop short when my path crosses with someone elses, and they always, always say "sorry". For what? For existing?