Slick Chinese

I failed my O level economics, but I am pretty sure the fact that the Chinese are stockpiling oil is not a healthy situation for the rest of us.

Can you pile oil? I suppose you can if it is in barrels.

Got Your Number

The stunt of publishing someone's telephone number has been done before, many times, and it is no longer funny. Westminster City Council seems to think otherwise as staff there have elected to take the problem of prostitute cards directly to mobile phone carriers by printing up their own versions of personal services cards giving out the details and phone numbers of the executive's they believe to be at fault.

I wonder how pleased the staff or council members of Westminster City Council would be if one of their disgruntled citizens took a similar approach to bringing attention to their personal grievances?

As my elderly aunt used to say: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you".

Mitchell Makes Booker Shortlist

The 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction longlist was announced yesterday. I am very pleased to see that at least one of the books I have read in the last 12 months has been included. Doubly pleased that it is a book by one of my favourite authors.

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is a fantastic read in a literal, as well as literary, sense. In this, his third novel, Mitchell returns to his episodic storytelling style used in his debut novel Ghostwritten. In Cloud Atlas, however, the links between the nested stories are more subtle and not immediately apparent as the reader is taken forward and then back in time.

Using the Booker as a suggested reading list has paid dividends in the past as I have discovered writers and writing styles I had not encountered before. My favourite books from previous years include last year's winner Vernon God Little. Other winning or shortlisted books I have enjoyed are: Life of Pi, Amsterdam, Unless, Atonement, Number9dream, The God of Small Things and Last Orders.

As with the last few years I shall be waiting eagerly for Tuesday 21 September when the shortlist will be announced. Between then and the announcement of the winner in October I shall attempt to read all the shortlisted books so I can have my own view on the merits of the winner. Unlike last year I shall attempt this year to write reviews of every shortlisted book as I finish it.

25 Billion UK Texts in 2004

Based on the figures for the first 7 months of 2004 totalling 15 billion text messages, the Mobile Data Association has today revised its 2004 forecast upwards from 23 billion to 25 billion. This will compare with a total of 20.5 billion text messages for the whole of 2003.

The strength of texting growth has been seen throughout 2004, during which monthly figures have exceeded 2 billion since the beginning of the year.

The added convenience of texting during the holiday season is demonstrated through July’s figures, continuing their upward trend to 2.15 billion. Person-to-person texts sent across the UK GSM network operators last month increased by 28% on the total sent during the same period in 2003, and a daily average of 69 million compared to 54 million in July 2003.

These figures received an added boost on the 19th August with a total of 81 million text messages sent on the day when youngsters shared their ‘A’ Level results and success with friends and family. This shows an increase of 21% on last year, and a year on year increase of 14 million text messages sent at this time.

Busy Weekend

Well it was a very busy weekend in Northampton with lots of early mornings, late nights, greasy breakfasts and yummy curry.

There were plenty of folks on hand to capture the events on camera. The local BBC and press also covered the event.

I am looking forward to having a lie-in next weekend.

Weekend Away

Well, that's me done for the week. I am off to Northampton.

If you see this balloon, please do drop by and say hello. We could probably do with your help as we wrestle the 700lb envelope in and out of the bag.

Politically Correct Software

No-one can expect software developers to be the most politically informed or sensitive souls in the world. Added to that, my experience of most US citizens is that few have a passport and the majority rarely pay attention to things which are happening outside their home state - unless of course it is a country their government had deemed appropriate to be on the receiving end of a preemptive strike.

So I suppose it was to be expected, and only a matter of time before the world's biggest US owned software developer would drop a brick or two to upset the funny foreigners. Then again, with all their money and resources, wouldn't you think that they would employ a few folks to check this stuff out? Seems that software security is not the only blindspot in Redmond.

Real Olympic Stuff

I was chatting to a friend last night who had just returned from a cruise on the Millennium. He was telling me all about the grandeur of the ship and then he mentioned the dining room which he said was made up of the oak panels from the Titanic’s sister ship, The RMS Olympic. They had apparently been put in storage since the Olympic was scrapped in the 1930s and have now been restored to their former splendour in another ocean going liner.

This struck me as odd because I have eaten a meal, on dry land, in the beautifully oak panelled dining room of the White Swan Hotel in Alnwick, which makes a similar claim for the origin of it’s décor which was installed in – you guessed it – the 1930s.

So which establishment is making the correct claim, or are they both? Did the Olympic have so many dining rooms for the panelling to fit out two new places? Are there more spread around the world?

Our conversation put me in mind of all the churches across the world that claim to own relics, in the form of splinters of wood, from the one true cross, or the sacred remains of saints who, if all the bones were brought back together, would turn out to have several legs, arms, multiple hands and be hydra headed.

Here in England we have any number of pubs which claim to be the “oldest” in the land, county, city, village etc... We have one here in Oxford – The Turf Tavern.

I suppose, in the end, it doesn’t really matter. The proprietors have a unique selling point and gullible visitors get a good feeling about visiting somewhere special whilst enjoying a drink, food, or a religous service which includes both.

Perhaps that gives us a clue to how there is so much of the Olympic to go around. Upon installation the panels of MDF undergo some form of transubstantiation and become the Olympic reborn.

Always Read The Label

About three years ago I won a t-shirt in a tequila drinking contest in New Mexico. The company awarding the prize was Presidente and the shirt is bright red.

I have worn the shirt on and off ever since winning it as it is actually quite a cool shirt and it normally just goes in the wash with all my other coloured items. Today I got lazy, thinking that all the loose dye must surely have been washed out of it by now.

I just got my laundry out of the dryer to find that a pair of white briefs had sneaked into my wash and - horror - they are no longer white. The t-shirt looks just as red as it has always done but the underpants are now a very feminine shade of pink. I won't be wearing them to the gym anytime soon.

Bullying Poultry

We all have days when we feel the world is not going our way. When we just get fed up with people telling us what to do and not explaining the reasons. As a result we can end up feeling neutered and lacking authority.

The natural feeling when put upon, it to put upon someone else, but that just passes on the misery.

So next time you want to give someone meaningless tasks to do in order to feel that you have some authority over another being, just have a go at the subservient chicken.

Swish Cottage Lives!

I have just discovered a little treasure trove. The cached remains of my favourite blog of all time.

I was so disappointed when David stopped blogging, and then even more so when visits to www.swishcottage.com returned "Server Not Found" errors.

However, when doing a reverse link of my blog. (thanks to Lyle for showing how) I discovered the link back to the Blogspot cache of the lost bloggings of Mr Sim. Some of the pictures may have gone, but the text is all there.

Scratching the Pink

They have managed to keep it ever so quiet at the moment, but I am sure the news will leak out soon, especially after I finish this posting. Remember, you heard it here first.

From now you will gradually see a change to Intel's brand for it's Centrino technology. It won't be a huge change, in fact it is quite subtle, but you can already see the effect on the Intel website. The half butterfly logo is changing colour from hot pink to a darker maroon.

Now why, you might ask, would such a change be needed to such a well established brand? Well it seems the folks at T-Mobile had already registered or patented or in some way reserved the exact shade of pink which Intel were using and so the German telecoms company have managed to persuade Intel that it would be better all round if the world's largest chip-maker stopped confusing everybody. The reasons are understandable, I mean there must be millions of consumers who have gone into a computer shop displaying the Centrino logo expecting to be able to buy a T-Mobile phone and vice versa. I kid you not!

As an Intel stockholder, I am not chuffed at this news. Can you imagine the millions of dollars or pounds or euros which deployment of the replacement will cost? According to Intel's Hotspot finder site there are already over 28,889 locations worldwide which are carrying the Centrino brand for their access point. Just sending each of them a new window sticker is going to soak up quite a sum. Then there is all the poster advertising and stickers on PCs.

Oh and that's another thing. T-Mobile have also hijacked the commonly used word "Hotspot" for their own WiFi service. I wonder how long it will be before we all have to write a little TM next to the word Hotspot in acknowledgement of T-Mobile's ownership?

So, how do we feel about T-Mobile now?

One Hot Beaver

I have just spent the weekend playing with a Beaver. No, really, I have.

Bud E Beaver is a Cameron Balloon which normally lives in Mahomet Illinois and this weekend he returned home to Bristol for the first time since construction to attend the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta.

Ballooning normally takes place in the first few hours after sunrise, and the last few hours before sunset as this is when the winds are most calm and predictable. As a result I spent the weekend getting up at 4am and getting to bed at 11:30pm. In the 72 hours from Friday to Sunday I had a total of 13 1/2 hours sleep and it really isn't enough. Right now I feel like I am suffering from the worst ever case of jetlag.

It is a little known fact that Bud E is the first ever makeover balloon as he used to be Mr Potatohead, until Hasbro decided they didn't want that balloon flying any more. Now after a significant facelift he is Bud E Beaver and attracts lots of children whenever he lands.

Bud E Beaver will be in the UK for one more week and if you want to see him for yourself you need to be in Northampton next weekend when we will be doing it all again. Personally I can't wait for another weekend of sleep deprivation!

Too Much Work

Enough of this, I am off to Bristol!

Circle Line Party

Bugger! I missed it again!

Too Clever by Half?

My earlier posting - about a free text based reminder service - has put me in mind of a curious anomaly on a current TV advert for text services.

Has anyone else spotted the deliberate mistake on the Virgin Mobile ad running on TV at the moment? You know the one I mean, the one with Christina Aguilera bouncing up and down on the chair while waiting for a record company executive to arrive.

So, the punch line of the whole ad is "The devil makes work for idle thumbs - Text another Virgin mobile for 3p".

Now I know the idle thumbs in question are those of the songstress but I have looked at the ad several times now, not hard given that it seems to run in almost every break on C4, and I haven't seen a single person texting throughout the entire ad. Worse than that, the two scallywags wearing the hard hats and who are central to the plot are seen, talking to the journalist on their mobile seemingly eschewing the idea of texting.

Don't believe me? See for yourself.

Wouldn't it be more devilish work to be spreading gossip about a celebrity than her merely playing with the adjustable height of a chair? The latter being a quite innocent pass time with no evil connotations whatsoever.

Do you think anyone at Virgin Mobile actually viewed this ad before it aired the first time? Would it not add weight to the message if those spreading the news (doing the devil's work) were actually using the Virgin texting service?

The advert is the work of Digital Media Communications Ltd who I feel may have got carried away with the need to showcase superstar talent at the expense of the true message. Perhaps this is a case of a creative team being too clever by half.

Free Reminder Service

It isn't often that you find something genuinely useful on the web that is still free, especially if it involves a providing a service which is delivered to a mobile phone. However, I have made use of this free handy personal reminder service and it has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.

Just register for the service and then input those dates which are important to you and your loved ones. Whenever one of your registered events come around you will be sent a text message reminder two days beforehand so you will still have time to nip out and buy a card, send a gift, book the church etc..

I think this is only available to UK phones at the moment (those with international dialing codes of +44) but if you are overseas and have tried the service, do let me know, I would be interested to hear in which countries it actually works.

18 Visitors to Go

Yes folks, its 9:30 on Tuesday morning and my visitor counter is just 18 off that magic (to me) number of 15,000.

Remember yesterday's challenge? Send me a screenshot of the counter actually showing 15,000 and receive a prize.

Oh, and I checked, pressing refresh doesn't work. So you can't cheat.

Roll-up roll-up.

Supermarionation

Look what I found! Some early images of Team America World Police, the forthcoming film by Trey Parker and Matt Stone - makers of Southpark. The official website includes a great trailer and there are some still images here.

Judging by the style of the animation it is going to look and feel very much very much like the Gerry Anderson TV programmes of the 60s and 70s. Thunderbirds, Captains Scarlet, Joe 90, Fireball X-15. Ahhhh, those memories are flooding back. It is a strange inversion as Thunderbirds is about to be released in the UK as a live-action movie.

I am really looking forward to seeing Team America when it is released this Autumn.

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog!

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet --- results and commentary will appear there in the future.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate -- the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst (this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google (or Technorati) for all blogs that participate in this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS

Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers

1. I found this experiment at URL: http://www.stuarthomfray.co.uk/weblog/
2. I found it via "Newsreader Software" or "Browsing the Web" or "Searching the Web" or "An E-Mail Message": Newsreader Software - RSS feed from http://www.stuarthomfray.co.uk/weblog/
3. I posted this experiment at URL: http://www.sapientum.com/
4. I posted this on date (day, month, year): 02/08/04
5. I posted this at time (24 hour time): 14:25:00
6. My posting location is (city, state, country): Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS

Replace the answers below with your own answers:

1. My blog is hosted by: Sapientum Ltd
2. My age is: 42
3. My occupation is: Flâneur
4. I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Sage Firefox extension
5. I use the following software to post to my blog: Blogger
6. I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 16/11/02
7. My web browser is: Firefox
8. My operating system is: Windows XP

15,000th Visitor - Will it be You?

According to my visitor tracking service Sapientum will welcome its 15,000th visitor sometime later today or perhaps tomorrow morning. Not bad for a site which is only 20 months old, has never really sought (or found) major publicity and has gone dormant for a period of weeks on at least two occasions.

I wonder who the 15,000th visitor will be.

Right now, as I type, the counter stands at 14,952. So that is 48 visitors to go.

Here is your challenge - if you can email me a screenshot of my blog with the counter showing 15,000 exactly (no photoshopping allowed - that would be unsporting), there will be a special little prize for you. I am not going to tell you what it is yet, but it will be worth it!

Stormwatching

There is an old saying about summer weather in the UK. Actually, to be fair, there are rather a good many old sayings about the weather and just about everything else. However the old saying I have in mind that that a British summer is "Three hot days followed by a thunderstorm".

To prove this folklore true, and after enjoying some beautiful weather for the past few days, from Monday we are about to experience what forecasters are calling "a breakdown in the weather".

The thunderstorm are on their way.

I love a good storm. For me it is weather at its most exciting. On my travels I have watched natures fireworks with fascination as they have been displayed in various locations in the world. The most memorable were while on the high plains of Montana, flying in and out of Dallas, driving in Johannesburg, from a balcony of a chalet in the French Alps on board a yacht in Sea Cows Bay, British Virgin Islands and even suspended in one of the glass pods of the Millennium wheel in London.

There are some for whom storm watching isn't enough. They are not happy to sit and wait for the storm to come to them. They indulge in storm chasing, and even take time, as the tempest rages around them, to make some really beautiful photographs.

If you would rather sit in the comfort of your arm chair, or at your computer desk, then I have found a much safer way for you to plot the course of storms across the UK. Thanks to the lovely people at Meteorologica who have put up a free Realtime Lightning Monitor map. Just load this into a browser and refresh the screen every minute or so and you can see the lightning strikes as they happen.