This image comes from Quentin’s entertaining spoof about Apple jewellery. It pointed me towards Blender, an astonishing Open Source modelling package. The only problem is that, being a slow learner, I need to take six weeks off to learn how to use it. Quentin seems to have mastered it in a few hours. Sigh.
Having a BlackBerry makes one reflect on those flyblown theories that all our communications will converge on the mobile phone. I’ve just spent a few days in Donegal where I was for the most part deprived of wired connections to the Net, so the BB became my prime communications channel. And it works fine — in the sense that stuff gets through. But wading through a stack of email messages on a small screen, and replying to them using an ingenious but fiddly keyboard (which, for example, always assumes that when I type ‘see’ I really mean ‘are’), is not something I would wish on anyone. It’s fine for a few days, in extremis, but not really viable as a sole platform. And although it’s terrific to be able to access Google or BBC Online from anywhere with a GPRS signal, browsing on such a small screen is purely for masochists. The laptop has some life in it yet.
Walmart is one of the creepiest firms in the US (and one of Wall Street’s favourites). It pays its employees so little that many of them are eligible for food stamps. And, as part of its ‘human resources’ services, it even provides help desks which advise employees on how to claim for this kind of welfare. Now, according to this week’s Economist, the company’s Chief Executive has said that “Congress should consider increasing the minimum wage.” The thought that Walmart might increase its employees’ minimum wage without troubling Congress doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.