Generalism

I don’t know how long Orange’s cellphone plan advertising campaign has gone on for, but it seems like eternity. Ya see ya have yer basic dolphin, and yer common or garden cat, er racoon thingy, and I think that’s a pigeon there, and, well, whatever the hell that last one is.

But of course if you thought naming the things was the tricky part, then you were mistaken. That would of course be far too easy, and we all know they like to work you much harder than that. No, you better believe that every single floaty animal biscuity shape actually means something, so it does!

So, you have your pigeon, now that gives you 1500 texts, 10 free minutes and a direct line to your mother-in-law. But your cat, er, racoon, well, now that’ll get you 2000 texts, a woolly jumper, three free pizzas, and a date with this pretty girl here… Hmm, actually I might have remembered that slightly wrong…

And for those people that are hard of reading, if I didn’t make myself clear, and I have on many occasion been accused of being far too subtle, here it is in plain words. It’s crap. The animal biscuits are crap. What they stand for is crap. It’s all crap. And what’s more, it was crap to start with, and it doesn’t get any less crap if you put the adverts on every 5 seconds on every channel for how ever many years you mistakenly signed up for! And dammit if you haven’t just made me give you another free advert! Gah! Pox on you!!!

Look, I just want to save us all some time and effort here, okay? If you just happen to like the biscuity shapes, then please go ahead and sell animal biscuits instead. At least those I might consider buying.

Oh good god, Microsoft, will you pack it in with the multi-touch screen photo and map demos already! I’ll tell you two of the things that I do least on my PC.

1. Manipulate photos
2. Manipulate maps

This continual insistence that firstly touch-screens are going to be the saviour of the PC, Microsoft, or for that matter Windows, is just so misplaced; touch screen technology has been around a long long time, and it has hardly rocked anyone’s world in that time. In addition, the same old demos of opening a photo, and, WOW! Hang on a minute! Did that guy just SPIN that photo around with… TWO FINGERS?! Holy mother of all that’s holy!!! Being able to use more than one finger at a time is not a killer app.

So poor old Microsoft now seems to think that the next version of Windows is going to be a world beater because of this touch-screen technology and two of the most useless capabilities known to man. They also seem to think that focusing on “Search” which, according to Bill Gates, is a great time and money investment, will help Microsoft’s plight. I’m sorry, but I have to take issue with that as well. Who cares about a better search than we have right now? More importantly who cares if Microsoft builds the best search? I mean, really?

Okay, so perhaps I’m just having a gray day, but this company has been around for, what, twenty years now, and grown to countless thousands of employees worldwide. In that time they’ve created two world-changing products: Windows and Office. Windows was stolen from Xerox, and Office was a copy of another suite of apps that happened to be in development at the time, and just happened to win the typical Betamax vs VHS race (though Office was arguably the better of the two). I guess with so much experience and so much money, I’m just hoping for, and expecting, so much more. Oh, and Bill, if you think pledging your full support behind this guy is ever going to make things any better, you and I should have a chat.

I wanted to do a quick addendum to my previous post as this article on Slashdot made me realize just how much is actually going on in the energy research communities that we simply never hear about.

Detailed technicalities apart (you can read the full gen here), these guys have theoretically proven the ability to create extremely cheap energy from a type of fusion reaction that utilizes hydrogen (from water) and boron (from sea salt) and expels only helium gas. And what’s more, the proofs for the technology have already been in front of a range of scientific brain-boxes, and been given a unanimous and rather excited thumbs up.

So, a garage-sized, non-nuclear reactor generating enough energy to power a small community at fifty times cheaper than current costs, all for $300k a pop? I have to say, my excitement levels could well be on a par with those scientists…

Well I suppose it had to happen. For the second time in recent memory, hauliers are protesting against fuel prices, now up to 130 / 135p per litre for diesel here in the UK.

For me, there’s two things that spring to mind. Firstly, there are simply too many lorries on the road all the time; the motorways are clogged with them at all hours (if you’ve ever been stuck in stationary traffic on the M1 at midnight, you certainly know what I mean), and they seem to be responsible for most of the accidents on the road, as well as most of the traffic snarl-ups. Recent business advances don’t help; “Just in time” processes save companies huge amounts of money, but in doing so essentially turn these lorries into portable warehouses, putting even more on the road more of the time. Companies tightly coupled to this strategy will really be hurting.

The other issue is that fuel prices must be high, and will need to be higher still, for real change to happen and real alternatives to appear. If fuel was 20p a litre, where would be the incentive to research and develop a replacement for this dirty and destructive liquid? In setting prices so high, the oil companies will score an own goal; the higher the prices, the more value there will be in finding a replacement.

Regardless of whatever happens in the near-term, the writing is on the wall for petrol and diesel as fuels, they simply won’t last forever. The protests will only result in a temporary price change (if at all), but I’m happy with anything that adds to the focus on alternative fuels, and for that I will add a hearty round of applause, wish them luck, and carry on my merry way.

Okay, a little competition, entitled “What’s more crazy-ass?”. Out of the options below, what is more crazy-ass?

1. Paying £1000 each to watch a football match. In the rain. With no accommodation. And your team loses.
2. Naming your child “Urhines Kendall Icy Eight Special K” (pronounced “your highness”), “GoldenPalaceDotCom Silverman” (affectionately known as “Goldie”) or, heaven forbid, “Batman Bin Suparman”, or, lord help us, “Dick Assman”.
3. Making a staircase out of books.
4. Collecting your navel fluff.

OR

5. A cow the size of a frickin’ house!

Nice try guys, but as is often the case with these things, the winner must be yet another crazy cat.

I must go wipe these tears away… <sigh>

Update: a late contender has just entered the competition - people queueing at Apple’s flagship store in New York, for absolutely no reason at all. Now that really is crazy-ass!

The Ministry of Defence started opening up its UFO files to the public this month, so what better way to carry on the strangeness than with a slightly more down-to-earth site I recently came across.

It shows what they describe as “sliding rocks” positioned in the middle of the Death Valley National Park. The weird thing is that, much like the UFO files, no-one has yet been able to figure out exactly how these things are a-slidin’ around, though best efforts currently point at the wind. I would have thought a bit of stop-motion cinematography would have cleared that little puppy up a treat, but as the article says, perhaps it is more fun if we never actually find out…

Sometimes I’m a bit slow, but it has just dawned on me that TV adverts are damned loud. So loud in fact that during every ad break I’ve been finding myself doing everything I can to get them off my screen.

Discussions with friends and colleagues has led me to wonder if this is deliberate on the advertiser’s part, after all increased volume equals increased mental awareness, and ensures people boiling the kettle, going to the little boy’s room, <insert favourite ad-break activity here> can still hear the advert clearly.

The Advertising Standards Authority website actually serves to clear up our misapprehensions however. They state that advert sound levels actually need to conform to strict guidelines, and must ensure that their loudest parts do not exceed the volume of the loudest parts of the surrounding tv programmes, but they also go on to state that there currently exists a problem with this stipulation.

Imagine a single trumpet playing at a volume of 10, and the surrounding orchestra playing at 1. The trumpet is clearly the loudest or “peak” volume in this instance; this situation would represent the TV programmes. Now due to technical necessities, adverts are typically compressed, which, in effect, forces the rest of the orchestra up to around 8 or 9 whilst the trumpet continues at 10. The loudest peak volume of the trumpet hasn’t changed, so guidelines are adhered to, but of course the overall volume has now gone completely off the scale.

The ASA are actually working to change the stipulation and make the “loudness” a subjective measure rather than one that relies on peak volumes. A distinct improvement. In the meantime though, I suppose we shall have to continue pressing mute or channel hopping, to try to save what’s left of our brand-saturated frontal lobes.

I usually enjoy my weekly trawl through the Economist, but this week’s read was just too sobering an affair to get much pleasure from;

• Chinese earthquake - at least 50,000 dead
• Myanmar cyclone - at least 130,000 estimated dead
• Bombings in Jaipur
• Mexican Drug gangs vs Police vs Army
• Worldwide credit crash/crisis/crunch
• Yet more fighting in Lebanon
• Fighting between Chad and Sudan
• Political roller-coasters in Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Sri Lanka amongst others
• Continued intractability between Israel and Palestine (these guys have the same issues that I was studying in high school history 20 years ago!)

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With the summer coming on, and with it the perennial famines and drought, the problems are only set to get worse.

I’ve just finished watching CCTV footage from the UEFA cup final on the BBC news site and I just can’t believe what I’m seeing.

Some days I like to think that we’ve moved on as a species; people in space, landings on the moon, scientific discoveries in abundance. Never in the history of human consciousness have we been more enlightened. And then you see those scenes.

I wish that people in positions of authority would come down hard on this behaviour. Not “30 arrests were made” hard, but “ban the game” hard, “ban all attendees” hard, “ban football completely” hard. It’s all a joke these days anyway. Did you see the top two teams in the Scottish Premiership at the weekend? 30 points ahead of the third place team. THIRTY POINTS. When the leaders were only in the 80s, this is just plain farcical.

And it’s not even the few spoiling it for the many; there are a LOT of people swarming the police in those clips. The “30 people arrested” would have struggled just to cover those kicking and stamping on the policeman on the floor. What about the other hundreds running around throwing bricks at anyone and anything?

Okay I’m done. I can’t say I’m feeling any better, but at least there’s now another voice out there pleading for a zero-tolerance approach. The trouble is I’m sure we’ve been here before.

I’ve not been in the house much this week, which has meant a great tan, but no blog entries. A shame, but until the internet becomes ubiquitous, sitting in the park will remain a disconnected and blog-less affair.

By the by.

I managed to visit a few of London’s museums during my week off. They were curious places, as well as being mostly empty, for which I only partially blame the working week.

I like war planes, big hulking monsters designed solely to kill kill kill!! (nice when you want to stop nasty people taking over the world). So I was really looking forward to the London RAF museum visit. In the end though walking around was okay, and looking at the planes was nice - all polished and shiny (oh, and the company was smashing too by the way! ). But unfortunately, that was it. You couldn’t touch the planes or go in them. All you could do was stare from a distance. Which would have been all well and good maybe 30 years ago, but just doesn’t seem to stack up in the 21st century, a time of multimedia and computing power pumping out frighteningly realistic visuals (looking at you Call of Duty 4). With such technology I no longer have to put up with just looking at planes, I can walk inside, take off, fly, land, shoot, explode and die all in an afternoon whilst drinking a cup of tea and sitting on a comfy sofa in front of my 60-inch LCD tv. So why would I go to time and expense of visiting the RAF museum, a wholly less satisfying experience than the one in my living room?

The RAF museum and many others around London seem to be edging towards antiquated obscurity much like the objects they contain. The trouble is those objects are fascinating! And real! And have solidity and meaning and life and aren’t just flat images on a tv screen! But from 10 feet away, behind the forest of “Do not touch!” signs they may as well be on tv. Without the tea. Or the sofa.

Tell you what, RAF museum people, charge me 10 pounds. No, charge me 20 pounds, and let me come and sit in all the planes and touch things, and fire things, and let me really really _feel_ what it was like to be in them when they were in service. I’d go back. Maybe two or three times. By keeping it free but unsatisfying, I certainly won’t be going back, and I will have to dissuade my family and friends from going anywhere near, and that is a real shame for everyone.