Thank you and goodnight

Myself: I screamed a scream in time gone by, when hope was high and life worth living .......
Pierce: X
Amanda: X
Simon: X
Ant 'n Dec: But it's your votes at home that count.

It's not me, it's you

"I make multi-million $ decisions on a regular basis — why is it soooo
difficult to decide what to do with my hair?"

Time Magazine's "Twitter's Biggest Egos, Exposed" is required reading as an introduction to http://tweetingtoohard.com/top "where self important tweets get the recognition they deserve."

Unintentional comedy (or at least I think so) from the social media maelstrom.

Barack Obama's Facebook Feed is a deliberate pastiche, bit still very funny.

A Bleak Bloke

The Romanian philosopher EM Cioran remains one of the most difficult modern writers to come to terms with. With an aphoristic, charged, almost violent style, and a portfolio of subjects well outside our contemporary philosophical mainstream – despair, ecstasy, boredom, insanity, suicide, crime, illness, nothingness, music, sex, entropy, all considered as raw and immediate experiences, not as matters for academic investigation – he can seem like an atavist, a soul in permanent unarmed combat with the mores of enlightened society. “Annihilating,” he wrote in The Trouble with Being Born, “flatters something obscure, something original in us. It is not by erecting but by pulverising that we may divine the secret satisfactions of a god. Whence the lure of destruction and the illusions it provokes among the frenzied of any era.”

I never fail to be astonished by the people and things that we're apparently not supposed to laugh at.

Grumunkin

Last night as I was listening to Chris's Last FM radio station, and pondering how - sprogglewise - it would infect mine, I decided that he had done enough to earn his own anagram.

Henceforth then, Christopher Howell, with a nod towards his nautical bent, shall be the Whole Ship Chortler.

The Chortler joins the Bomber, The Burglar, and the Bear (who has his own category) in my descent into incomprehensibility. The final destination is incoherence.

Select something below to pipe him on board.

Amanda Grayson

When we were watching the new Star Trek movie a couple of weeks ago, the Bomber leaned over and whispered, "I think the ones with the pointy ears are the Treks and the other ones are the Stars." Trekkie lore is acquired a posteriori (sitting down in front of a screen) as opposed to a priori it seems.

I've only discovered since watching the film, that Spock's mother was played by Winona Ryder. (Plot spoiler: Anyone who can watch the scene in which she dies without laughing must have a heart of stone.)

But Winona Ryder as Spock's mother! Heathers was made 21 years ago? Dear me I feel old.

Myself: I had a similar shock in Trevor Nunn's acclaimed 2004 production of Hamlet at the Old Vic, in which Imogen Stubbs (a slip of a girl as far as I am concerned) played Gertrude.
Prodnose (adopting sarcastic Cambrian lilt): There's posh you are.

Driven to Distraction

You can read about "Twitter, Adderall, lifehacking, mindful jogging, power browsing, Obama’s BlackBerry, and the benefits of overstimulation" in New York Magazine, but The Profit Burglar is off sick and I have to gird my loins and get stuff done.

I have so many demands on my time that "12 Essential Rules to Live More Like a Zen Monk," will be more use than Twitter today.

1. Do one thing at a time. This rule (and some of the others that follow) will be familiar to long-time Zen Habits readers. It’s part of my philosophy, and it’s also a part of the life of a Zen monk: single-task, don’t multi-task. When you’re pouring water, just pour water. When you’re eating, just eat. When you’re bathing, just bathe. Don’t try to knock off a few tasks while eating or bathing. Zen proverb: “When walking, walk. When eating, eat.”


2. Do it slowly and deliberately. You can do one task at a time, but also rush that task. Instead, take your time, and move slowly. Make your actions deliberate, not rushed and random. It takes practice, but it helps you focus on the task.


3. Do it completely. Put your mind completely on the task. Don’t move on to the next task until you’re finished. If, for some reason, you have no choice but to move on to something else, try to at least put away the unfinished task and clean up after yourself. If you prepare a sandwich, don’t start eating it until you’ve put away the stuff you used to prepare it, wiped down the counter, and washed the dishes used for preparation. Then you’re done with that task, and can focus more completely on the next task.

Don't give up on lists of 12 items after the first three.

Britain's got talent

I am not proud, but I have succumbed.

John Roberts

Here's a good popular piece on John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States, and perhaps George W's most robust contribution to American public life

......... Obama has at most one more chance to take the oath of office, and Roberts will probably have a half-dozen more opportunities to get it right

Strategy Tax

10 months into netbooks, I have given up on Linux and gone back to Windows XP. I just got fed up of not being able to run stuff like the motionbased agent, Nokia PC Suite etc. with out messing about with WINE.

Ironically it is just as Chris has launched himself into the self same territory.

I am deliberately sneaking the story out on a weekend.

Merantau

A Welsh guy is putting the finishing touches to an Indonesian action movie. (Thanks to Chris for the tip-off.) You can even follow him doing it on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ghuwevans.

It all seems so remarkable and unlikely that I am hugging myself in my mind. I wish it Tony Jaa 'Ong Bak' breakout levels of success.

Sproggling

I'm falling in love with music all over again with Spotify.

It sproggles everything I play over to www.lastfm.com where they are arranged into a library. I think that you can listen to a "radio station" based on it at http://www.last.fm/listen/user/NickBrowne/personal.

What an extraordinary thing that is. There is much to think about in social media.

Expensive (formerly thoughtful?)

I got an email from Siobhan McDonagh, my MP over the weekend. She said:

I talk to many people each week but you are all too polite to ask me any details about my expenses.

That is why I want to make it clear I do not claim anything at all for my mortgage, property maintenance, furniture or food. I pay all these myself.

Under the rules, I could claim for a second home, but I won’t, and I never have – my only home is the same one in Colliers Wood where I have lived since before I was elected in 1997. The only personal expense I re-claim is for transport.

Here's the skinny from her website on her personal expenses, explaining with regard to transport:

I do claim petrol and fares to cover the costs of undertaking my parliamentary work. This includes travelling to various agencies, and going to meetings and other events on behalf of residents. I am not permitted to claim for the congestion charge.

I think that she should be able to claim the congestion charge, making me possible the only person in the country who thinks the system partially unfair to Members of Parliament.

Anyway, she appears to be on the side of the angels which is all to the good.

There is an interactive heat map of MPs' expenses at http://msn.shoothill.com/ which is well worth a look.

Comment is superfluous

I met Enoch Powell once. Here is a photo of him on a po-go stick from 1962.

Innovate or enervate

My first post since March about Amazon's offerings. Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling have been launched in the States and are imminent in Europe.

The day we can move our auction system onto this infrastructure and let it size itself can't be too far away. What a boon it would have been in the server meltdown that followed our BBC One Show appearance.

I noted in passing the other day that Twitter uses Amazon for storing images. I wonder what else the Amazon platform underpins?

Immanent as well as imminent?

Another Fine Mesh

I've been following Marc Canter for three years now, and I think he is on to something with this Open Stack.

Like all protocol stacks it is probably more honoured in the breach that the observance, but it is useful tool for arranging thoughts, especially as we are starting to use OAuth in anger for the first time now for some Twitter API development.

Hiraeth

Welcome to binge Britain: Polish photographer documents four years of drunken revelry in Cardiff

...... despite the often good-natured antics, Maciej is sometimes taken aback by the levels of drinking involved.

Tears in rain

I was at the movies (avec the bomber and a chum) yesterday marvelling at the incongruity of the Beastie Boys 'Sabotage' appearing on the soundtrack of the Star Trek reboot when Google crashed, so it didn't bother me at all.

That's all. Kirk out.

Sick Note

There is an eight year old off sick from school in the office with me today.

That is taking up all my spare attention.

Spotify

I started listening to musc via spotify yesterday. Just search for Bach and click play; life gets better.

There's a feature called collaborative playlists.

I've set one up. If you're on Spotify and follow this link, you can add tracks to it. "Nessun Dorma" Mr Howell?

Osoto Gari and Tai Otoshi

Kids Muay Thai has ground to halt because of problems with premises leaving something of a hole in the life of the bomber who has been doing it since 2006.

Cycling round the streets the other week however, I stumbled upon a purpose built dojo at Ernest Bevin College, and last night Ben and his mate Prashant bowled up for their first judo lesson which Ben in particular dug mightily.

Balance is restored to the universe. (I could discourse on how muay Thai and judo complement each other, but I might come over as some sort of psycho.)