Tuesday, November 20, 2007, 12:17 AM
If you believe this thing and its makers, Amazon, we'll soon be waving bye bye to the good old-fashioned book, and reading novels on this handheld device. The 'Kindle' intends to become a sort of literary iPod, on which you can be reading anything from Stephen King to Mein Kampf. The great thing about it is that the title you are reading becomes private - you can sit in the train/tube, and not feel self-conscious that you are reading the Da Vinci Code 3 years after half the world has read it. It also spells good news for the world's trees, and bad news for the paper mills that no doubt feast on forests week in, week out.
Yet I'm not backing this device, as its fundamental flaw was exposed when I heard about it. A colleague forwarded an email, mentioning that he had read a bit of an interview with Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon on www.newsweek.com. The thing was, he hadn't read all of the Newsweek interview, just a bit. And thereby proved that screens aren't conducive to reading anything than small bite-size chunks of text.
I was going to make a few more points, but on that latter note, I guess that I should bring this blog entry to a close a little earlier than I would normally.
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Monday, November 19, 2007, 12:29 AM
I have to apologise to those who stop by this site now and again in the hope that I might have finally written something of consequence.Fact is, I could blame the increasingly sporadic entries on my increased workload with my job, or on Ruby's erratic sleeping patterns, but they would all be denial. The fact is, my blog has fallen victim to the seductive power of Facebook.
For the past three months or so, I have amassed a collection of 133 friends, professional and unprofessional, I have been poked, zombified, I've had people throw farmyard animals at me and people have done all manner of unspeakable things to my wall. In the meantime, I have slowly stopped amassing friends. By that, I mean that I don't have a great number of friends that I have yet to add - they're pretty much all there now.
So now that I have reached friend saturation point, I am beginning to wonder how to use Facebook. I mean, I am seriously concerned that overuse of Facebook could lead to the utter neglect of those very friends that you are showcasing on this rather shril site.
So here's the deal - I will now be using Facebook a lot less - I will only use it to upload videos of our daughter now and again so that friends and relatives can see her grow. And I can now confidently say that I have never thrown a sheep at someone and now never will. Feel free to continue to drop by here - I won't poke you, and I have had this site checked for zombies.
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Saturday, October 27, 2007, 01:17 AM
Shocked when I encountered this bit of news. I always thought that Simply Red was not a band, but just a brand name for Mick Hucknall. How can Mick Hucknall split up? Which bits come off?
So let's think of some other bands that are just basically a solo artist with blatantly meaningless members who even their own fans would not recognise:
Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor)
Jamiroquai (That annoying bloke with the sports cars)
Babyshambles (That annoying bloke with the hat, fag and drugs)
Derek and the Dominoes (Eric Clapton)
Hmmm - I think I will have to update this one. Anyone welcome to chip in with some ideas.
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Monday, October 22, 2007, 11:45 PM
Here is exhibit one for how important it is to plan where you put your ads, making sure they have been researched and mocked-up properly. Whenever you use the back of a bus. you have to be careful with the old 'back of a bus'-type stigma that can go with putting a person's face there. However, in this case, the gentleman on the left will have less issues about his face, and slightly more in the area where the exhaust pipe emerges at the bottom. This is either a wonderful piece of 3D thinking, or just simply unfortunate...
With many thanks to The Register
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Sunday, October 14, 2007, 12:59 PM
Just in case anyone was wondering, I am currently away, sampling the delights of the Baltic Sea on the island of Rügen. I'll have a bit to say when I am back, but meanwhile here is an image taken on the beach near my hotel. The only time to get any space to yourself is in the dead of night...
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