Monthly Archives: July 2006

Quote of the day

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“I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone”.

Bjarne Stronstrup, actress.

Not to be confused (as I had originally done) with Bjarne Stroustrup, the designer and original implementor of the programming language, C++. I mean, an ‘n’ is just a ‘u’ standing on its head (he said, feebly). Haven’t looked at my email yet, but I bet someone picked up my elementary schoolboy mistake. Wonder what the emoticon for ’embarrassed’ is? Hmmm…. There seems to be some debate on the matter. This source claims that any of these will do:

  • :”->
  • :”-)
  • :$ or
  • :-$

    • What Bloggers write about

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    Interesting research report from the Pew ‘Internet and American Life’ project. Summary:

    A new, national phone survey of bloggers finds that most are focused on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers and that only a small proportion focus their coverage on politics, media, government, or technology.

    Related surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the blog population has grown to about 12 million American adults, or about 8% of adult internet users and that the number of blog readers has jumped to 57 million American adults, or 39% of the online population.

    These are some of the key findings in a new report issued by the Pew Internet Project titled “Bloggers”:

  • 54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say they have published elsewhere.
  • 54% of bloggers are under the age of 30.
  • Women and men have statistical parity in the blogosphere, with women representing 46% of bloggers and men 54%.
  • 76% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to document their personal experiences and share them with others.
  • 64% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to share practical knowledge or skills with others.
  • When asked to choose one main subject, 37% of bloggers say that the primary topic of their blog is “my life and experiences.”
  • Other topics ran distantly behind: 11% of bloggers focus on politics and government; 7% focus on entertainment; 6% focus on sports; 5% focus on general news and current events; 5% focus on business; 4% on technology; 2% on religion, spirituality or faith; and additional smaller groups who focus on a specific hobby, a health problem or illness, or other topics.

    • G’Bye

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    This morning’s Observer column…

    The trouble with IT is that there’s always someone whose business plan involves world domination. For a time, it was IBM. Then it was Microsoft – which hasn’t given up on the goal, by the way, but is beginning to realise that tiresome obstacles like the European Commission might scupper the plan. The latest contender for Supreme Ruler is Google, which until recently was a cheeky startup run by guys claiming the freehold of the Higher Moral Ground, but is now a grubby corporation just like the rest…

    The pleasures of Provence

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    (We’re on holiday.)

  • Waking to sunshine, every morning without fail.
  • Strolling to the village to buy (i) newspapers and (ii) croissants, pain au chocolat and baguettes for breakfast.
  • Sitting in the shade, reading (i) from cover to cover and munching (ii) in a companionable silence.
  • Greeting a sleepy son, recently risen from his bed and now on his way to the pool. Marvelling at the fact that the last thing he did last night was to swim under the stars, with the underwater lights on.
  • Discussing with one’s host whether we should make more coffee, or simply sit and have a cigar. Decisions, decisions…
  • Browsing through the pile of books on the hall table trying to decide which one to read today. (This is book-a-day territory.)
  • Wondering why anybody would want to live anywhere else.

    • The abuse of power

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    One of my favourite books is Power by Steven Lukes. In it, he says that power comes in only three varieties: the ability to make people do what they don’t want to do; the ability to stop people doing what they want to do; and the ability to shape the way they think. The last is the power that our decaying mass media have, and in Britain exercise to a frightening degree. Britain’s tabloid culture explains why it’s effectively impossible to have a grown-up public discussion about any complex policy issue.

    Brooding on this this morning, I came on Martin Kettle’s column in this morning’s Guardian. “It is beyond argument”, he writes,

    that the award of peerages has always been a cynical business. Ditto that Britain’s party-funding system is unsustainable. And also that John Prescott is a busted flush. All these things are true and, in context, serious. But there is much more to politics and government than this. Yet our po;itical culture doesn;t want to know. It seems incapable of getting out of second gear.

    This has been a week, after all, in which politics has emphatically not been about games but about the real thing. The Middle east has taken a sharp turn for the worse. What appears to be Islamist terrorism has been unleashed on a country with impeccable anti-imperialist credentials. And the UK government has announced a major strategic rethink of the country’s long-term energy needs.

    And yet what, for most British journalism this week, has been “the question that just won’t go away” — aka the question we prefer to go on asking anyway? Not the Middle east, Islamist terrorism or whether the lights will stay on. Instead we have a choice of: “Why didn’t John Prescott declare the gift of a stetson?”, “Who else has he slept with?” or “Are the police going to question Tony Blair about Labour loans?” In this political culture, the closest we get to putting it all into perspective is episode 952 of the “When will Blair go?” saga.

    Getting it right second time

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    One of the delights of the Guardian is the “Corrections and clarifications” column which runs alongside the leaders. Not only is it an example of good practice (everyone knows that we journalists make mistakes, so why not make a feature out of a bug?), but it often makes enthralling reading. See, for example, this entry from July 14:

    The photograph of a jellyfish shown in ‘Bathers beware’, page 9, yesterday, was of a Pelagia noctiluca and not, as we have been informed by the agency which supplied it, Auerlia aurita.

    Exeunt France, Zidane

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    It’s over. But what madness overtook Zidane? Here is the moment as recorded in Rob Smyth’s Live Blog of the match.

    109 mins: ZIDANE SENT OFF FOR STICKING THE HEED [sic] ON MATERAZZI!!

    Oh. My. God. In his final professional match, Zidane had been sent off for a disgraceful headbutt on Materazzi. He just rammed his head into Materazzi’s chest; it was really firm and nasty. Horrible. Now that really is a headbutt. It was also completely off the ball and at first it seemed he’d got away with it, but after talking to his assistant – and possibly after an intervention from the fourth official – the referee was alerted to what happened, and sent Zidane off. He has always had a nasty streak, but this was just ridiculous. What on earth did Materazzi say to provoke that? Either way, it was a disgusting, nasty, blackly comic headbutt, delivered with a Hitchcokian suddenness, and it’s an unbelievable ending to Zidane’s lustrous career. It was a JFK moment and a GBH moment rolled into one oh-my-giddy-aunt moment. And he could still end up lifting the World Cup!

    He didn’t. But it was such a terrible end to a great career. Mind you, one look at Mathias Breschler and Monika Fischer’s astonishing large-format portrait of Zidane would convince anyone that he’s not the kind of guy you’d like to meet on a dark night.

    Now that’s it’s over (the tournament, that is), here’s the strangest thing of all. During the entire duration of the footyfest, which supposedly gathered the best footballers in the world into small patches of Germany, there was only one truly outstanding match — that between France and Brazil. I watched many of them with my laptop perched on my knee, and that was the only match which seriously diverted my attention from email, browsing, blogging and work.

    Email candour

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    I’ve been reading the leaked emails from Des Swayne, Dave Cameron’s parliamentary gopher, courtesy of the Sunday Times. The one I particularly like includes the following passage:

    1. Transfer of HoL [House of Lords] reform to Jack Straw means that Teresa [May, the shadow Leader of the Commons] will speak for us: this is a sensitive issue and Teresa is neither liked nor trusted across the party. A tight rein will be necessary.

    2. Nicholas Soames wants to talk to you about how to ‘stroke’ the peers. I have asked Louise for a slot.

    What can this mean? Nicholas Soames is a preposterous voluptuary (and close friend of the Prince of Wales) who never fails to amuse. One of his estranged ex-girlfriends was once quoted (I think in Private Eye) as saying that making love to Soames was “like having a very large wardrobe fall on you — with the key sticking out”. He always reminds me of another celebrated voluptuary, Lord Castlerosse, who was similarly statuesque. The prospect of Dave and Soames massaging members of the House of Lords does not bear thinking about.

    Political blogging in the UK

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    Useful piece by Ned Temko in this morning’s Observer. Includes links to some of the most prominent blogs. One of them is by David Miliband, the teenage Cabinet minister (and the next Labour leader but one), who writes his own blog entries and claims to read the comments.

    I also rather like the Blog maintained by Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor. I’m astonished that he can find the time to write one — his day job is one of the most punishing in the media business.

    Iain Dale’s Diary is rather good too, though the reference in the name will escape most younger readers. (Mrs Dale’s Diary was an early, genteel BBC radio soap which ran during my childhood in the 1950s.) Maybe the reference escapes the author too: after all, his name is Iain Dale!

    All systems go (on my Mac)

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    This morning’s Observer column — about virtualisation…

    At this point, dear reader, I know what you’re thinking. However fascinating this ‘virtual machine’ nonsense may be to geeks, it’s of no interest to normal human beings. You may feel as Mrs Dave Barry did when her husband, the Miami Herald humorist, took her for a spin in a Humvee and proudly explained that the vehicle could inflate and deflate its tyres while in motion. Why, she asked, would anyone want to do that?

    So what’s the point of virtualisation? Simply that it provides a vivid illustration of the most disruptive attribute of digital technology – its capability to break the link between an application and a physical platform. Once upon a time, if you bought a PC it ran Windows, and if you bought a Mac it ran Apple’s operating system. But now Macs run Windows, and IBM ThinkPads – which have the same processor – can run OS X (though of course Apple is doing its best to head off that possibility). And Linux runs on everything.

    This disconnection of application/ service from hardware is happening all over the place…