… in 1988, a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
Monthly Archives: December 2008
Haute couture
Click on image for bigger version.
The crunch
Seen in Covent Garden last night. Click on image for bigger version.
Village to close after contributing nothing to local Tesco
A 1000 year old Oxfordshire village is to close after it was deemed not to be economically viable to the local Tesco superstore. Villagers received the news at a tense public consultation meeting last night when Councillor Shapley revealed that not a single person from the historic village of Stony Bridgeford shops or works in the Tesco store a few hundred metres away. ‘It’s no good being sentimental about these things. In this modern competitive environment, villages either have to pay their way as far as the supermarkets are concerned or face closure.’
There had been some hope of keeping the village open, and just closing down some of the older and more annoying residents as a compromise but this was rejected as impracticable. David Gordon representing the village commented ‘We are devastated by this ruling from the local council. We have been good neighbours to Tesco and never gave them any bother despite having lorries thundering through the village at all hours making deliveries. Our village has stood since the Doomsday Book, Tesco has been here six years
From NewsBiscuit — Britain’s answer to The Onion.
Thanks to Boyd Harris for the link.
The benefits of synchronisation
SERIOUS, U.S. BIDDERS ONLY PLEASE!
This is a like-new 3G, 16GB, Black Apple iPhone, and boy does it come with a million dollar story!
I purchased this phone a few months ago. Last week, it was stolen from me. Having become quite addicted to this marvelous piece of technology, I went right out and bought another one with some money I had in savings.
The next day, as I’m scrolling through to make a phone call, I notice some new contacts in my brand new phone. Apparently, the thief had added contacts to my stolen phone, and Apple’s MobileMe service synced those contacts with the internet, and then with my NEW iPhone! I called the contacts, got the thief’s information, and called the police. By the end of the night, I was the proud owner of TWO iPhones.
Needless to say, this phone is in PERFECT condition. I’m selling this one on ebay in the hopes of offsetting the expense of my new iPhone, as well as the $150 speeding ticket I got rushing down to the Apple Store that night to purchase the new phone! :)
From an eBay auction listing.
Call it a micki
Doc Searls has been thinking about what’s missing in wiki technology.
Wikis are flat. All topics are at the same level. This is fine for an encyclopedia, but lousy for, say, projects. Joint efforts such as ProjectVRM are not flat. They have topics and subtopics. These change and move around, and this is where an outliner like MORE is so handy. With a few keystrokes you can move topics up and down levels, back and forth between higher-level headings… You can hoist any single topic up and work on that as if it were a top level. You can clone a topic or a piece of text and edit it in two places at once. I could go on, but trust me: it freaking rocked. There was no faster way to think or type. Hell, I’m typing this in one of its decendents: an OPML editor, also written by Dave Winer.
Anyway, just wanted to say, here in the midst of an unrelated local conversation, that wiki that works like MORE remains on the top of my software wish list for the world. Trust me: it would make the world a much more sensible place. And make both individual and group work a helluva lot easier.
Dave Winer is interested. I’d put money on the proposition that something useful will come from this.
MORE was the most useful piece of software I’ve ever used. It ran on all the early Macs I owned. For years after OS X came out I retained the Mac Classic emulator for just one purpose — so that I could run MORE. I stopped only after Q discovered OmniOutliner, which is pretty good — and still the best tool for thinking on my machine. But it only works on my stuff: a wiki tool which would bring that kind of functionality to collaborative documents would be a killer web app.
Negroponte invents new Olympic sport
Gosh! I’ve got an XO laptop, but I wouldn’t dare try that with it.
Obama’s team
Useful picture gallery from the Guardian.
On this day…
… in 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful man-powered airplane flight, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Neither man had a pilot’s licence. Tsk, tsk.
Where are you, Mel?
Amid all the fuss about Bernard Madoff’s Giant Ponzi Scheme, the really important question is being overlooked: who will make the movie? To my mind there is only one possible candidate — Mel Brooks. This is really a remake of The Producers — but on an epic scale. Just imagine, all those intimate scenes in the Palm Beach Club as Bernie suckers nice ol’ widows. And then there’s his ‘auditing’ firm, Messrs Friehling & Horowitz, which according to the only hedge fund which appears to have done due diligence on Madoff, consisted of one partner in his late 70s who lives in Florida, a secretary, and one active accountant. Sadly, Zero Mostel is no longer with us, but Gene Wilder could play the role of that “one active accountant”. And maybe some of the the folks who were suckered by Madoff could get something back by investing whatever cash they have left in the new production. It’ll be a sure-fire hit.*
*Warning: This Blog is regulated by the Financial Services Authority. The value of shares may go down as well as up. You should consult an Independent Financial Adviser or a Yeti, whichever is more accessible, before committing your life savings to any sure-fire investment scheme.