HM the Q. Seen on the wall of a foyer of an hotel in Stoke on Trent. She’s using an M3. Not sure about the lens. Maybe a 35mm Summicron?
Dead wood
On my way to work. I’m always waiting for a dramatic sky, but so far no luck…
Going phishing
This arrived in my email. Apart from the fact that I don’t bank with HSBC, you only have to hover over the URL to know it’s a scam.
(The actual URL is:
http://69.6.186.47//images/.www-hsbc.co-uk.uk-co=HSBC.personal-1-2/www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/personal/pib-home/).
WhoIs indicates that 69.6.186.47 is an ISP based in Amarillo, Texas.
Why do people fall for this stuff? (They wouldn’t if they took our course.)
What knowledge workers need
Very thoughtful essay on the software tools people need to escape the ‘data smog’ that envelops most/many modern organisations. The nub is that:
Today, many knowledge workers feel overloaded because they are forced to react to a constant stream of email, phone calls and instant messages. Email, the phone and instant messaging have one thing in common – they are all push work flows. In other words, they interrupt what you are doing. Theoretically, people can ignore all three, but generally, socially, it is difficult to get away with ignoring all three when you are at the office.
That sums up my own experience. Institutional email has become dysfunctional. In my university department, for example, a conscientious person who read, reflected on, and replied to every email addressed to him or her could easily spend the entire working day doing email rather than reading, thinking, teaching or researching. This is nuts. And my personal strategy for coping — which is to ignore most of the email flow — is unfair to my more conscientious colleagues, who sometimes really do need me to pay attention to something they’ve sent. In other words, the strategy works — for me — but is anti-social.
We have to find or develop IT tools that help rather than swamp us. The key idea — encompassed in the quote above — is to step back from push technology and use pull technology which brings stuff we need or regard as important to our attention. The RSS feed is a metaphor for what I have in mind. I need to spend some time thinking about all this (which means that even more departmental emails will go unread).
The Schwartz also rises
Jonathan Schwartz has replaced Scott McNealy as CEO of Sun Microsystems. Why is this interesting? Well, (i) he has a ponytail, (ii) he’s smart and (iii) he writes an interesting Blog. And he’s a persuasive evangelist for Grid computing.
Resignation logic
I’m quietly pondering the intrinsic logic of Home Secretary Charles Clarke’s position. He admits that there has been a gigantic cock-up on his watch, one that has put the public in danger. The honourable thing for a Home Secretary to do in those circumstances is resign. But rather than resign, it’s vital — Clarke says — that he stays on to ensure that the problem is fixed.
So… to ensure job security, you arrange a screw-up so that you can stay on to fix it.
Hmmm…. shome confushion here (as Bill Deedes might say) between being part of the problem and part of the solution.
Actually, I rather like Clarke. I met him first when he was Neil Kinnock’s Chief of Staff, and admired the stoical way he carried out that thankless task. I later locked horns with him over the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), which he piloted skilfully through Parliament. He was a formidable opponent.
He was an excellent Secretary of State for Education. But as Home Secretary he’s scary — seems to have bought into Blair’s authoritarian agenda. It is said that Clarke and Gordon Brown loathe one another, so his future under a Brown premiership would have been decidedly dodgy — so much so that I had a hunch that he might have run against Brown for the leadership. Can’t see that happening now, somehow.
Mad car disease
In the old days, chaps used to boast about the size of their engines, bhp at peak torque and other arcane measures of the relative potency of their vehicles. But Dave ‘Green Boy’ Cameron has really started something with his guff about hybrid cars. Now, the Editor of the Guardian is getting in on the act with a piece saying that his electric car is even greener than Dave’s hybrid Lexus — so yah, boo sucks to Cameron. Where will it end?
Boring, boring
Dave Barry wrote a nice column about why and how people are boring. Sample:
Speaking of sports, a big problem is that men and women often do not agree on what is boring. Men can devote an entire working week to discussing a single pass-interference penalty; women find this boring, yet can be fascinated by a four-hour movie with subtitles wherein the entire plot consists of a man and a woman yearning to have, but never actually having, a relationship. Men HATE that. Men can take maybe 45 seconds of yearning, and then they want everybody to get naked. Followed by a car chase. A movie called Naked People in Car Chases would do really well among men. I have quite a few more points to make, but I’m sick of this topic.
Phew!
According to BBC News Online, Tory leader Dave Cameron has returned from his fact-finding mission to the Arctic determined to tackle the problem of CO2 emissions from cars.
The Conservative leader said he wants emissions cut from 170 grammes per kilometre now to 100g for new cars by 2022 and all cars by 2030.
He has swapped his Vauxhall Omega for a Lexus with a hybrid engine (emissions 184g per KM). Critics say he could have got a cleaner Toyota Prius (104g).
He hit back claiming a Prius could only fit four people in it and in his job he often needed more space than that but he said by getting rid of his government-provided car, the Omega, he had got rid of a “real gas guzzler”.
I’m indebted to Bill Thompson for pointing out (in an email this morning) the narrowness of my escape from ridicule. I might have had the ultimate embarrassment of driving the same car as Dave “Vote Blue to Get Green” Cameron! But I expect I will now have to put up with jibes along the lines of “Oh, I see you’re a Tory voter” when people see me getting out of our Prius. Sigh.
Update: They’re all at it! The LibDem leader, ‘Sir’ Mingus Campbell, is getting rid of his Jaguar.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell says he has given up his beloved Jaguar car to highlight his commitment to the environment.
Sir Menzies says he is “tear-stained” to admit that the 20-year-old vehicle is up for sale and being housed in a barn on a farm in East Lothian.
Bet he doesn’t opt for a Prius.
Express mail
A colleague of mine is in Australia at the moment. This morning he emailed me with a technical query. The message came through to my BlackBerry, so I replied straight away. Back came this message:
Gosh. Allowing for the time difference, your reply came nine hours before I sent the question!
Well, you know what they say. “The impossible we do today. Miracles take a little longer.”