Just realised (from writing a cheque) that today is 05-05-05. When I mentioned this to the kids, they looked at me pityingly. I know that look: it says “Poor Dad: he’s quite cool but a bit slow on the uptake”. Er, they’re right.
Oh no! — not MORE PhotoShop options
Yep. PhotoShop CS2 is out, with even more features than the CS version I use. I’ve worked out that if I learn how to use one CS feature a day, (there are apparently 494 separate menu commands) I will have mastered the program by the end of 2006. And now the goalposts have moved.
(Thinks… Ostrich posture best strategy: don’t upgrade. Pretend CS2 never happened and hope Quentin doesn’t notice.) David Pogue of the New York Times claims that there are “at least 95 Photoshop how-to books, 3 Photoshop magazines and 4 annual Photoshop conferences”. I’m not surprised.
The new, improved Tory party
Simon Schama on Michael Howard:
Then came the really worrying bit. The Somewhat Beloved Leader’s voice dropped, the eyes moistened, the smile widened. Acute observers could instantly recognise the onset of a Sincerity Attack. “I love my country.” Then he told us how he truly feels. About himself. About Britain. Proud. Immigrant roots. State school. Really proud. Work hard. Do well. What Britain’s all about. Not layabout.
But wait, there’s more:
This sort of thing is of course obligatory for American campaigns where the “story” of the candidate; a combination of autobiographical confession and patriotic profession, is the sine qua non of “making a connection with the voters”. But in Ashford, among the flowery frocks and jackets flecked with doghair, the narrative seemed wetly embarrassing. Then exit to reprise of Victory at Sea and sustained (if not exactly deafening) applause. The faithful were giddy with excitement. Well, almost all of them. One loyalist with a bottle-green flying-ducks tie, was still barking over the State of the Country. “Are you optimistic about Thursday?” I asked tentatively. “I TRY to be,” he conceded, “though I was going to desert the sinking ship.” “Where to?” “Montenegro.” “Montenegro?” “Yes, Montenegro. Not many people know this, but the wine is wonderful and -” (he whispered confidentially) “- they have the most beautiful women in the world. Though, of course they do tend to be a bit hairy.”
Lovely piece, reminding one that however grubby British elections may appear, they are a world apart from what passes for political campaigning in the US.
The flip side
I’ve installed ‘Tiger’ — code for version 10.4 of Mac OS X on two of our home machines, and the installation went just fine and both computers are happily chuntering away. (I’m too rattled by Quentin’s experience to entrust my PowerBook to it yet.) One of the nice things about the new version is ‘Spotlight’ — an amazing desktop search program that indexes the entire contents of your hard drive and finds things instantly. But there’s an unintended side-effect of this — neatly captured in a wry email from a friend:
There is a downside to everything. This is the one for Spotlight: suddenly you see how much you have forgotten. I was busy writing a lecture. Looked for something on Spotlight. And discovered that I had written something very similar a year ago. Completely forgotten. Shocking.
Well, yes. But isn’t it better to be reminded? Besides, great things come from faulty memories. Tim Berners-Lee was motivated to invent the Web partly because he had such a terrible memory and kept losing track of information! Full story on page 233 of this. (Health warning: shameless plug!)
DIY declassification
Ho, ho! The Pentagon released a heavily-censored PDF version of its report into the shooting, by US troops, of the Italian secret agent who was escorting a freed hostage to safety. But it turns out that you could make the blacked-out paragraphs in the classified document, containing top-secret details (such as the name of the soldier who fired the deadly rounds of ammunition) reappear by cutting and pasting them from the site into a Word document! More exquisite details from Corriere della Sera here.
Night flight
“It was a dark night, with only occasional scattered lights glittering like stars on the plain. Each one, in that ocean of shadows, was a sign of the miracle of consciousness. In one home, people were reading, or thinking, or sharing confidences. In another, perhaps, they were searching through space, wearying themselves with the mathematics of the Andromeda nebula. In another they were making love. These small flames shone far apart in the landscape, demanding their fuel. Each one, in that ocean of shadows, was a sign of the miracle of consciousness … the flame of the poet, the teacher, or the carpenter. But among these living stars, how many closed windows, how many extinct stars, how many sleeping men …”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, writing about his first night-flight over Argentina in the prologue to Wind, Sand and Stars.
Quote of the day
“More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.”
Security expert, Bruce Schneier.
Penguin remix competition
On May 9th Penguin launches Penguin Remixed, an innovative competition which invites musicians, professional and amateur, the opportunity to sample some of the best lines in literature to create new tunes. Audio samples from thirty Penguin titles will be available for download from the www.penguinremixed.co.uk website and entrants will be invited to submit their tracks to win MP3 players, subscriptions to Audible’s digital audiobookstore and the top prize of publication in a Penguin digital audiobook.
James Boyle: Deconstructing stupidity
Another terrific FT column by James Boyle, dissecting the imbecility of our IP lawmaking regime. Sample:
Since only about 4 per cent of copyrighted works more than 20 years old are commercially available, this locks up 96 per cent of 20th century culture to benefit 4 per cent. The harm to the public is huge, the benefit to authors, tiny. In any other field, the officials responsible would be fired. Not here.
It is as if we had signed an international stupidity pact, one that required us to ignore the evidence, to hand out new rights without asking for the simplest assessment of need. If the stakes were trivial, no one would care. But intellectual property (IP) is important. These are the ground rules of the information society. Mistakes hurt us. They have costs to free speech, competition, innovation, and science. Why are we making them?
Learning from eBAY
From my column in today’s Observer…
Amid all the ponderous guff in the election campaign about ‘trust’, one interesting fact has been strangely absent from the discussion. We are all agreed that politicians rank low in public esteem, down there with estate agents, property developers and other kinds of spiv. But there is another occupational group that ranks even lower than these creatures of the deep. I refer, of course, to journalists. We are despised by the public – yet the fact that we shape the public’s attitude toward politicians remains unremarked. Thus we have a really weird vicious circle.
The public reviles politicians on the basis of images and impressions that are exclusively mediated by people who are widely regarded as equally loathsome and contemptible. This reduces the election to something akin to choosing a bride using reflections in the distorting mirrors of a funfair.