Earthly confusions September 30, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Observation, Science.1 comment so far
I get confused sometimes.
I got confused over whether or not to eat butter or margarine. Or for that matter margarine that tastes like butter. Or butter that spreads like margarine. I’ve actually given up trying to figure it out and now choose based solely on the logo; anything with Sunflower Symphony Yellow in it has a high purchasability factor, aesthetically pleasing sat alongside the eggs and salad cream in the fridge.
I then got confused over mobile phone radioactivity. Does having my phone on inside my pocket irradiate all my little love buddies into desertion? Or maybe it gives them a pro-plus energy zap, a “red bull” for the trouser department? One thing to be certain is that these phones should never ever be held up to the ear when taking a call, it should be hands free all the way baby! Only, it may actually be that hands-free units give a nicely wired ring of radiation doom around your neck, and where to put the phone whilst taking a hands-free call anyway? Back in a trouser pocket? Somehow that just doesn’t seem right. But then again, some people suggest that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with mobile phones even whilst movies of them shown cooking popcorn pervade the scary archives of doom. Gah. I’m going back to cans and string. They’re okay surely…?
And now, I’m totally and utterly confused about the state of the planet. I mean, it’s one thing to argue the do’s and don’ts over colour-matched yellow spreads and communication radiation therapy, but it’s a whole other mountain range of beans to go rolling around in when someone starts talking about the Earth cooling. Cooling?!
<pauses for dramatic effect>
According to a report published today, the planet earth actually cooled 0.7 degrees Celsius in 2007, apparently the fastest decline in the age of instrumentation, putting us back to where the Earth was in 1930. Crikey. I mean, crikey times a thousand, times a billion. I mean, crikey. Well, I really don’t know what to say to that. Where on earth does that leave greenhouse gasses? What about fuel efficiency and coal burning?! Oh my word, what’s to become of the hallowed and much loved nay marketed to death “Carbon Footprint”?! Our whole lives are currently so bound up with the whole idea of living leaner, meaner and greener, all to save the planet from cooking itself from the inside, and then some Mr Clever Man comes and tells us we actually have the opposite problem to what we thought we had!
As I said, I get confused sometimes.
And all the people, merely players… September 25, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Observation.add a comment
Well, what a pickle we have here. In the rush for lenders to hit ever increasing sales targets, in the clamour of people’s strangely inherent need to own their own house, in the rose tinted glasses of seemingly-but-not-actually-payable uber-mortgages and the blind emotions of wanting to live in houses way beyond reach, everything’s gone all pear-shaped now hasn’t it just.
And of course all parties in the screenplay are to blame; the greedy lenders for demanding ever increasing sales targets, as much as their customers for pandering to them.
The result of all this profligacy? Well shock, horror, not only are mortgage repayments in trouble, but so are food bills, petrol bills, heating bills; boy is this going to be an interesting winter.
What made this really special this morning was the appearance on breakfast news of people exclaiming their disappointment that Gordon Brown’s recent speech didn’t contain anything that would help them out of their self-dug holes.
Hold on a cotton pickin’ minute, did I hear that right? You did something completely inane, and now you want the government to come along and help you put petrol in your car?! Surely this is some jape, some late April-fools prank to be announced at the end of the show amidst gaffs and guffaws?! Errr, no.
Well, only time will tell how bad things will get. But in the meantime, some words to the players around the table;
To the government I say just leave everything be. Free markets are a fantastic leveler; given time house prices will level off, fuel and heating prices will make sense again, and in the mean time a sensible and healthy amount of belt-tightening will ensue. Don’t help people, they must learn themselves how to spend their pocket money. If you do anything at all, tell people to buck up and quit complaining. But do it nicely.
To the lenders I say, for goodness sake ditch the target-related bonuses and deal with the fact that you won’t always be getting 40% sales increases year on year. Making customers do stupid things so that you can line your back pockets before running off to a desert island may seem like a bit of a lark in the short-term, but someone somewhere is going to have to make and deliver all that Chablis, and if the world economy falls on it’s arse because of your actions, good luck trying to brew your own.
And lastly, to the humble people of the British Isles I say, stop being so damned stupid. You don’t need a suited smiler, one hand extended, the other firmly gripping his bonus-scheme documents, to tell you what you can or can’t afford. If you don’t overextend you may even be able to eat next week. If it’s too late, then it’s time to do what you would tell your children to do: step up to the plate and have the strength of character to deal with the consequences of your actions. Work harder, cut your bills and quit it with the complaining. The government is there to manage the country not your mistakes; stop taking up my valuable breakfast news time and start dealing.
Serious phone envy September 24, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Technology.add a comment
I love Google’s new Android phone. No, let me rephrase that, I love the idea of Google’s new Android phone, and perhaps more importantly what it represents. I can’t love the phone itself; the “G1″ looks and feels like an uninspired Doctor Who reject; trust me, it’s about as far away from the drooling shot above as you can get and still be a phone. BUT the juiciness comes from its ripples in the phone / mobile computer / supercomputer-in-a-pocket market space. Now that we like.
Of course there’s nought so dangerous in life as complacency (sharp edges and angry politicians aside). It’s what makes many a persona and company go beige in their latter years. It happened to the incumbent mobile phone companies; put my year-old w850i in a box with my original 90’s model and it’d be even money on who made it out alive, but as soon as Apple’s iPhone came out, T-Mobile, Orange and their sticky ilk have been thrusting their beige mitts in the air screaming “Me too! Me too!!!” at the top of their extraordinarily beige lungs. And unsurprisingly, their me-too offerings have all been just that; nothing original, nothing new, nothing outstanding, just yet more whatever-phones turning away ever more customers fed up with falling asleep at the keypad. Good, they deserved a kick up the rear.
But now we have another company doing its own thing, and one with the brains and pockets to potentially disrupt everything all over again, including the apple of every Apple fanboy’s eye. But the funny thing is, Apple need this more than anyone, and much more than they need market superiority. They recently increased the memory capacities of their latest iPods supposedly due to a competitor’s imminent stealing of marches, which goes to show what second-rate products even Apple customers have to put up with when the fire in the pants is down to mere complacent embers.
Looking at the iPhone v2 alongside v1, we don’t really see many changes at all; the software was updated sure, but v1 owners can upgrade. Other than that, the camera is the same, the screen and interface that made this phone unique are nigh-on identical. Did knowing they were way ahead of the curve mean that they could forget about the said curve for a year or two and get away with me-too-ing their own product? Well, now that Google have finally got things into gear, they may just need to stoke those fires again if they want to prolong their Indian Summer. Either way, the new contender should definitely make the future considerably more interesting for us walking-bags-o’-money, and if Google can get a handset approaching the above, we could see some serious fireworks in the offing.
A day of opinions (so what’s new?) September 23, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Advertising, Games, Observation.3 comments
A full month after my last entry (where on earth has the time gone?!), the reasons for which I’m sure will be forthcoming soon enough, I thought it fitting that I should come back with a bunch of opinions, which, for those that know me already will come as no surprise, I am moderately good at. Or at least have good volume.
Firstly, if you could go back to scratch, wipe the slate clean, blank canvas, fresh start, begin again, and design the humble every day car from the ground up, seriously, honestly, would you really really make your first ever attempt look like this?
Why follow the same old design rules Ford? I guess to make good looking cars, but hey, I’m just stabbing in the dark, which is probably what the designers did to come up with this piece of uninspired fugaliciousness. <ahem>
On a much brighter note, I’m a bit of a late-comer to the classics; 1984, A Brave New World, Run Spot Run, all read within the last five years, and all life changing in their own special ways. I’ve been fortunate enough to find the time recently to continue my quest down the crazy “read a page, ponder for a day (to try to figure out what the heck I’ve just read), read another page” path that these books always seem to engender, so when I was recommended The Glass Bead Game, by one Herman Hesse, I couldn’t help but fill up my Amazon basket with junk so I could justify the delivery charge. And I’m glad I did. So glad. Mr Hesse is officially “Da Man”, which actually won him the Nobel Prize in Literature for this book in 1946. It’s pages are perhaps somewhat short on car chases, and nary a bullet leaves a gun’s frontage, which to my mind is just plain crazy, but as a book that makes you go hmm, zomg.
And as a final opinion for the day, hey, we all know good things come in threes, my misty eyes roll over to the small, rather unassuming black box on the table in the corner. Race for the Galaxy is many things; a card game, an obsession, a blessing and most assuredly a curse. 2-4 players, a bunch of cards, planets, spaceships, trade and a ton of home-brew swear words, it plays like a concert pianist and delivers a Tchaikovsky finale with every outing. Holy crap, look, it’s good, ok? Just add it to your Amazon basket along with The Glass Bead Game and be glad you did. Oh, but don’t blame me when your other half just keeps getting the Cup Card, the D-Cup, the Sitting Down Bonus… Gah.
Oh, and the final final opinion of the day, so nice to be back. 
