Conquering Conkers

The bombardment has been going on for about a week now. I lie awake at night listening to the sound of the projectiles ricocheting off the roofs, fences and walls of surrounding houses, landing in the gardens shattering pots and denting the barbeque which I still use whenever the weather is fine and the wind calm enough to cause a brief cease fire of the incoming artillery.

These masses of tiny destructive weapons all come from a single source and they are the third of four annual plagues which are visited upon anyone with the mixed blessings to live in the shade of a Horse Chestnut tree. I have been here a year now with a fine 100ft specimen standing outside my garden but spreading its mighty limbs to cover almost half my little patch of this green and sceptr’d isle.

My garden year can now be measured in the arrival and passing of these plagues.

First comes the sticky buds, small and brown the tree sheds them early in the year as the leaves break out of their bud where the stickyness has served to trap or repel the insects and birds which might have made a tasty nutritious snack of the nascent leaves through the harshest winter months. The bud cases fall, as does everything, from the branches and cover the garden with a carpet of highly adhesive flakes, so easily picked up on the shoes and feet of people and animals. There they remain until such time as those same feet come into contact with a high quality Wilton or Axminster carpet whereupon the embed themselves deep into the pile, resistant to the suction of even industrial strength vacuum cleaners.

Next come the flowers. Shortly after pollination they shed their pinky-white petals which instantly turn to a brown mush when they hit damp ground. Almost an antidote to the buds, the ground is made slick and slippery but curiously this second plague is still a challenge to the house-proud as feet and paws bring in and distribute the mess with startling efficiency.

During the long summer the tree, apparently dormant, is building up reserves for its autumn show. The green prickly cases grow and ripen while those on the ground sit gratefully in the shade provided by glorious canopy of the towering tree. The leaves rustle in the summer breeze parting occasionally to give only the briefest glimpse of the growing hailstorm to come.

Through September and October natures bullets are unleashed. Down they come, the seeds of the Horse Chestnut tree – Conkers, to give them their common name. On still days the drop singly or in groups as the impact of the cascade from above release those still ripening below. But let it be windy and the last place you want to be is in the lee of the Conker Tree. The shower is then falling with a surprising intensity and alarming velocity and the unwary passer, and long suffering shade dweller alike are bombarded with tens or even hundreds of projectiles an hour. To venture out into the garden is to risk a pelting and receive a bruising. So I wait, for the calms between the storms to keep apace of the falling shrapnel and debris from their destruction. To fail to collect them leads only to a profusion of deeply rooted saplings the following spring. On balance it is easier to pick up the conkers than to dig up the plants.

Then finally, the leaves. Oh the leaves. So many, many leaves. The seemingly Sisyphean task of collection fills sack upon sack. But this last plague is mercifully short lived if profuse.

By the end of October the trees are bare and those below are granted a couple of months respite before the return of the buds.

On a Roll

Blimey! I have only recently written about the fact I never win anything when this comes into my mailbox.

Your image submitted to the 2005 calendar competition has been chosen as a winner and will be included in the final calendar.

Of the three images I submitted this winning entry is the one I thought least likely to be picked.

So it seems my dash last week to Boots and then the Post Office to submit my entry before the closing date was worth it. Sadly there is no big money prize. My reward is a free copy of the finished calendar and a mention as one of the contributors on the credit sheet.

Working on the basis that good things often come in threes I think I will be buying a lottery ticket this weekend.

Unity Postponed

Summer is over, and some of you will have been waiting for an update.

As predicted long walks were had, many bottles were uncorked and emptied, discussions went long into the night. News and views were shared, scenarios explored, proposals made and adopted. Sometimes progress was rapid, other times long thoughtful silences were the only indication of disagreement or disharmony. Alignment was often achieved even if it meant sacrifice from either or both parties.

Even after the other party returned home in August the work has continued and at the end of it all we have agreement and a plan. At the moment it is a plan with no dates because our first obstacle is, for reasons of existing contractual commitments, that the earliest start date is least 12 months hence. However, we do have a plan and a shared intention to make it work.

So now we move ahead. We will work together to pick off and overcome the obstacles one by one. Life will change, present new challenges. The road ahead is steep but I have faith that the view from the top will be a spectacular vista across broad sunlit uplands.

I am happy. Real progress has been made. The future is looking positive.

Little Fluffy Clouds

On a day like today, when the clouds turn the sky a uniform slate grey, I like to flick through the new submissions on Enchanted Ceiling. A public contributions project to collect beautiful photographs of the sky, taken from locations all around the world.

I love these photographic memes, especially as there are no national or cultural boundaries to entry. If someone in Hawaii or Fiji or Scunthorpe has captured and submitted the image we can all see what their bit of the sky looks like.

Collateral - Damaged

Back in the 1980s Michael Mann made Miami look good. His innovative drug squad drama was set in the Floridian city which, at the time, was not a pretty place to see. Myths circulated that as Mann's production team sought out new and cool locations for Crockett and Tubbs to visit, and sometimes destroy, the company paid for the repainting of many of the art deco buildings of South Beach. Whether true or not, careful art direction and creative cinematography caused the cocaine capital of the USA to appear an appealing and "cool" place to visit. The result was that people flooded to the city, apparently ignoring the dramaticised gunfire fuelled bloodbaths which were the other vital component of the show, and very real danger in the city.

In his latest film, Collateral, Mann has cast a similar spell over the city of Los Angeles. The whole extent of the metropolis looks beautiful at night and he has even made cab driving seem like a noble task. Even some of the awful violence is made to look balletic in its execution. Miami Vice helped Mann become the the master of the crowded nightclub shootout scene and in this film he shows he has lost none of that skill in the past 15 years, but then neither has his approach altered or improved in the intervening period.

Another star of the 1980s was Roger Moore, whose portrayal of James Bond attracted fans and detractors in equal measure. British satirical comedy Spitting Image designed a puppet whose sole means of conveying emotion was a slightly mobile eyebrow which arched in the same mechanical way to indicate everything from agony to ecstasy. Sadly for this film Tom Cruise, whilst he continues to be an extremely camera friendly face, has acting abilities which are on a par with Mr Moore's eyebrow. Regardless of the emotion his character is feeling Cruise relies on a vague frown which looks more like constipation than concentration. His obviously bewigged, wry, silver fox assassin has the same range of emotions and charmless wit as the Maverick character in Top Gun, and the gullible bar keeper in Cocktail. Sadly his performance is no better than, and little different to that of Bruce Willis when he played an obviously bewigged, wry, assassin in the remake of jackal. All winks and smiles and no real menace.

Fortunately for us Jamie Foxx is the other actor in this predominately two headed play. He even manages to retain his integrity whilst the script requires him to "show and tell" his way through a most laboured set-up scene within the first 10 minutes of the movie. During this scene the relevant plot points for the next 90 minutes are telegraphed for the hard of thinking thus removing any real feeling of suspense for viewers with an IQ greater than plankton. The scene takes place in the yellow cab between the driver (Foxx) and his passenger - a female public prosecutor. If you want to really enjoy this movie, and experience the slightest hint of mystery, follow my advice and arrive at the cinema 15 minutes late.

For the rest of the movie, while his character is floundering as the world around him turns to one of violence and disorder, it is Foxx's cab driver who controls the movie. His placement, in the driving seat of the cab, gives him some advantage in this but it is testament to his skills as an actor that he sets the tone and the pace of the dialogue, when Cruise, as the passenger (in every sense) seated in the back, fails to project his "personality" through the perspex screen, let alone past the silver one.

With all the ingredients, this film could, no should, have been so much better. I left the cinema feeling bored of violence, and believing Los Angeles is currently the most beautiful city in the USA. A very similar reaction to watching recent re-runs of Miami Vice.

Playground Porn

Back in August I wrote about how Westminster City Council had elected to implement a "name and shame" policy to force mobile phone networks to ban the phone numbers which appear on the fly-posted cards of London sex workers.

In an amusing (to my twisted mind) follow-up announcement, the Council press office has admitted that these colourful cards are being used by children as trading cards in the school playground.

I will swap you a "pre-op transexual dominatrix providing admonishment" for your "buxom French maid with own feather duster".

Winner's Luck

I have a relative upon whom the Gods (or genetics depending on your beliefs) have granted the luck of a winner. In a raffle her ticket is not merely picked, it is picked first. On several occasions I have seen her walk, weighed down with loot, from the Tombola table at village fetes completely oblivious to the bereft and disbelieving stares of the stall holders. She gets the fat half of the Christmas cracker, and finds the sixpence buried in the Plum pudding. Even ERNIE has favoured her by picking her numbers with a frequency disproportionate to her holding of bonds.

I, on the other hand, have invested hours and hundreds in competitions, lotteries and other attempts to increase my fortune by chance. In 40-something years I can count my canters around my personal winners circle on the fingers of one hand.

Even on those few occasions when I have won a prize, the reward was barely worth the effort (with the possible exception of my Blue Peter Badge - but that, as they say, is another story). Back in the 80s an entry to a quiz in MelodyMaker netted me a signed copy of "Into The Gap" by Tompson Twins. In 1994 I won £10 on the UK National Lottery. But yesterday I received an email telling my that I was one of 20 winners in an online competition.

What, you may be asking, was my prize? Is it a luxury cruise, a fast car, a lifetime's supply of yoghurt? No, my prize is a free pass to attend the Silicon.com CIO Forum in London next Monday. At £350 per seat, my prize is, without doubt, my biggest so far by value and yet I find myself curiously disappointed.

For the past ten years I have been organising, attending, speaking at, and even chairing conferences of this kind as part of my business. When I think of my countless unsuccessful attempts to win concert and theatre tickets, there is a cruel irony that my rare reward is tantamount to a busman's holiday.

Nevertheless, I shall go along on Monday, armed with business cards and a professional zeal to see if I can convert this opportunity into some real and long lasting business which should, with luck, help me save for the cruise, car and an unfeasibly large quantity of yoghurt.

Pentagon Strike

I was not really sure what to make of a Shockwave movie I was sent yesterday. It seems to imply that the explosion which partially destroyed the Pentagon on 11th September 2001 was not the crash landing of American Airlines flight 77.

I was not familiar with this particular conspiracy theory before today but it seems that there is a growing sense of unease that there was no evidence of an 80 ton Boeing 757 200 anywhere in the wreckage. No wings or tailplane ripped off as it crashed through the building, no gouges in the ground where the fuselage supposedly touched down before the explosion. Pictures taken minutes after the "impact" show intact windows and only one very neat and surprisingly small hole punched in the outer wall of the building.

Having watched it, I thought I would hunt around the internet for evidence which would support or debunk this conspiracy theory.

Compare these two pictures of the pentagon taken five days before and 24 hours after the explosion. (Click on images for more detail).



Associated Press Military Writer Robert Burns reported on September 13,2001, that members of congress who had visited the Pentagon crash site were told by rescue officials that much of the fuselage of the Boeing 757 remained intact inside the damaged Pentagon. Knowing how long air crash investigators take to sift through all the debris after a disaster on this scale I would have thought the second picture (taken on September 12th) would have shown more evidence of a crashed plane. In actual fact there is no plane visible and the damage to the building seems a little too neat.

Then I found a whole series of websites which expand on this evidence and focus on the lawn.

Theories abound but the two most popular are that the explosion was caused either by a missle or as he result of an extremely embarrasing scenario in which a sizable bomb was placed in a truck and parked against the wall of the building.

So, two questions;

1. If it wasn't flight AA77 that hit the Pentagon on 11th September what was it?
2. What happened to the real flight AA77, its crew and passengers?

Take a look yourself and see what you think. The file is 3025K big so if you are not on a broadband connection you may have to wait a while.

Mitchell Still in the Running

As I predicted back in August, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell is a strong and hotly tipped contender to with the 2004 Man Booker Prize.

The shortlist of six books was announced this afternoon. As is my annual custom, I now have to try and read all these books prior to Tuesday, 19 October when the winner will be announced.

Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor (Atlantic Books)

The The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber)

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (Picador)

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (Sceptre)

The Master by Colm Tóibín (Picador)

I’ll go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward (Chatto & Windus)

Fortunately I already read Cloud Atlas over the summer so I am one down five to go.

Online Radio Guide - Part 3 - Music One

Another in my series of occasional posts about free music I have found online.

If like me you enjoy throwing yourself around the dancefloor at a nightclub, or just jiving round the kitchen as you prepare your nightly meal, then I have found a great online source which streams dance music 24 hours a day.

Music One operates out of New York and has an all dance music policy. I have had it playing in the background all morning and have heard tracks by Groove Pirates, B15 Project, Michael Gray, DD Klein, Morgan Page, MJ Cole, Shapeshifters, Angelic and Deepsky.

The stream is available directly from the website, or you can find it hidden in the Electronica category on iTunes.

Currently the station is totally supported by listener contributions and through support of hosting companies like PlanetWideRadio so it is free, but then when the music is this good, it would be churlish not to bung them a few quid via Paypal to help them keep running.

I know what I will be listening to this Friday night to get me in the mood before I head out.

Crap PC

This week I am editing a newsletter publication I put together for a UK Trade Association. I needed to check some facts for an article I am writing so turned to trusty Google for help. Whatever it was I was looking for went right out of my head when I was directed to a page showing some interesting PC modifications.

Dean Liou is a database administrator by day, creative hobbyist PC engineer calling himself Envador, by night. Envador has put PCs into everything from Bar-B-Ques to Guitars. However the most arresting images on his site are of a fully functioning computer built into a toilet bowl! There are some really interesting touches like the flush handle acting as the power switch. I am not sure we really needed those noxious brown stains all down the pedestal. I am thinking it tells us more about Envador than we really want to know.

Perhaps the key message to take away from this site is that a PC does not have to fit into the "standard" grey or beige box with which we are all familiar. The concept of the invisible PC, where the gubbins are all masked in an attractive or interesting piece of furniture, is quite appealing. In fact a UK company called PowerDesk has been doing it for some years.

I love this concept of technology disappearing into the fabric of our houses and offices. - Ah! I just remember what it is I was looking for when I came in here, but I have work to do so that will have to be the topic of another entry.

Traffic

Traffic to my blog has gone nuts over the past 48 hours. Firstly thanks to a referral from Rigorous Intuition (thank you sir!), but also I am getting lots of visits from the USA which appear to be as a result of a link in an email which is currently circulating.

Of course everyone is welcome here, but I am curious; if you have arrived at this blog from a link within an email, please do tell me (in the comments box) what the email says, and why you are here.

Friday Phone Fun

It must be the ineluctable cussedness of the universe which causes me to be at my busiest in a week where there has been much about which I could blog. Several times I have tried to snatch five minutes to post an entry about the foxhunting ban, super heroes scaling the walls of Buckingham Palace, invasions of the mother of all parliaments and that was just two of the seven days since last I blogged. However, five minutes is never enough to capture my thoughts on these events and so rather than do a poor job, I abandon the posting altogether. Maybe I will find some quiet time over this weekend to do a quality job on each, some or all of them.

Meanwhile, it is Friday once again and so I have been sifting through infospace to find some diverting pastime for you all as you watch the clock heading inexorably towards 5pm.

I came across this strange little site a while ago when I was back-tracking some email addresses. Since then the author/designer has won awards, and even been mentioned in the press a few times.

The interweb is full of Shockwave projects like this and I normally just add them to my bookmarks as I find them. When I have another 5 minutes, I will hunt through my favourites and post a few more soon.

BA for AH

Too busy to blog properly, but one important event happened this week which I must not let go unmentioned. My friend Allan graduated on Monday this week with a BA (Hons) in Accounting and Finance from Oxford.

Three cheers to Allan.

Now he is off to London to do a Masters before commencing his second career.

Not bad for a man in his 30s.

TV On Your Mobile

Now this is really exciting.

My cellular network provider and ntl are currently signing up participants for usability trials of the UK's first multi-channel TV to mobile phone service.

Apparently they have been erecting special broadcast transmitters covering an area 120 square km around Oxford and 500 lucky customers will be given a multimedia mobile phone with a built-in digital TV receiver from either Sony or Nokia, both of which have been instrumental in the development of the DVB-H standard.

The DVB-H broadcast transmission standard for handheld devices has been specially designed for "low power consumption and robust reception". It is intended as an efficient ?one-to-many? method of delivering content in a way that complements the functionality of third-generation networks currently being rolled-out by mobile operators.

It is quite funny because over a year ago I wrote a paper wondering why the cellular providers weren't making use of DAB or DVB to deliver services. At the time, any mobile operator I challenged on this issue was non-commital about the strengths or potential use of the technology. Later I heard that Manx Telecom had already completed some experiments alongside their prototype 3G network.

The Oxford trial is designed to test if there is consumer demand for mobile TV services. Participants will reportedly be able to receive 16 TV channels comprising music, sport, news, comedy, soaps, documentary, drama, cartoons and specialist channels, including interactive gaming and shopping.

Now, being a gadget freak, I have had one of those little Casio handheld colour TVs for about 10 years, and have spent about as many hours watching it. My main reason for not watching it more is the appalling signal reception and the tiny picture size. I am sure that the picture quality of the new service will be quite good - it is digital after all. However, the tiny screen and the tinny sound may still be an issue. Whatever, you can bet I will be doing everything I can to be selected to participate in the trial. I am in Oxford after all.

If I am selected and given one of the cool new phones, I will be sure to record my impressions here.

Do you know General Russell?

Chances are you don't know the correct answer to that question, or even why the question would be asked in the first place. However, if you were either of the men currently running for the title "President of the USA" you would. That is because both George W Bush and John Kerry are members of America's most elite club.

The Order of Skull and Bones is a secret society begun at Yale by William Huntington Russell. His cousin Samuel Russell’s family enterprise was the largest American opium smuggler. When Russell & Co. worked with the world’s largest smuggler, the Scottish firm Jardine-Matheson, they were known as the Combination.

To be a bonesman, you need to be one of only 15 students entering Yale university each year. Those 15 are chosen from the most promising students who also happen to be members of America'a top families, including the Bushes and the Forbes.

According to Skull and Bones lore, a Greek orator died in 322 B.C. When she died, the goddess Eulogia, whom Skull and Bones called the goddess of eloquence, arose to the heavens and didn't come back down until 1832, when she happened to take up residence in the clubhouse of Skull and Bones, called the tomb. The year 322 has also become a significant number for members and it is exchanged as a token of recognition.

Everything done by the club is done in reference, and deference, to this goddess. They have songs or "sacred anthems" that they sing when they are encouraged to steal things, some remarkably valuable items, supposedly, they are said to be bringing back gifts to the goddess. The club meets twice weekly and each session begins with the unveiling a sort of a guilt shrine to Eulogia. Members, also known as Knights, endure secret initiation rituals and never, ever, speak about the club, to the point of never saying it's name in public.

Like most clubs of this type, including the Masonic order, it is the fact that there are secrets that make them so interesting to those who must forever remain outside. Clubs of this type also represent a brotherhood with commitments to fellow members which are likely to take precidence over other considerations.

One thing is certain, this club is extremely powerful. You can see that just by doing the basic maths. There are probably less than 1000 members alive today and it takes a supreme stroke of luck, or the shadowy workings of a secret society, to ensure that no matter how the American public votes this autumn, the most powerful man in the world will be one of the Knights of Eulogia. A title which neither man will publicly admit to holding.

Meme Analysis

A short while ago I participated in an artifical meme propogation project.

Now a detailed analysis has been published which attempts to put the results of the project into meaninful form. It makes for interesting reading although I am not sure if it proves anything conclusive. Sadly the originator of the meme has not really done anything of a follow-up which would have been nice.

For me the only significant result of the exersize has been that I have been getting begging emails from the Firefox group asking me to formalise my use of their software by including one of their logos on my blog.

Fall of the Redmond Empire?

For years Microsoft Corporation has been one of the most successful companies in the world and is responsible for creating more multi-millionaires among it's employees and stockholders than any before it. However, the goths have been massing at the walls for quite some time and if you read between the lines of Microsoft's Annual Report, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on 1st September, you will see that all is not rosy in the garden.

For fiscal 2005, we believe industry-wide factors such as PC unit growth and the success of non-commercial software could significantly affect our results of operations and financial condition. PC unit growth was very strong in fiscal 2004, increasing approximately 13% from fiscal 2003. We do not expect similar growth to occur in fiscal 2005.

What does this mean? A clue can be found in what the company suggests are its "Key Market Opportunities". Number three on a list of ten is: "Continuing to compete against Linux and Unix for commercial workloads". A further clue is in the statement:

We continue to watch the evolution of open source software development and distribution, and continue to differentiate our products from competitive products including those based on open source software. We believe that Microsoft's share of server units grew modestly in fiscal 2004, while Linux distributions rose slightly faster on an absolute basis. The increase in Linux distributions reflects some significant public announcements of support and adoption of open source software in both the server and desktop markets in the last year. To the extent open source software products gain increasing market acceptance, sales of our products may decline, which could result in a reduction in our revenue and operating margins. Additionally, due primarily to our announced special dividend and quarterly dividend payments, if continued, we expect investment balances and resulting investment income to decrease significantly in fiscal 2005.

I am sure all the penguin lovers will be rubbing their hands with glee at the thought that the open-source movement is finally making a dent in Microsoft's business which is significant enough to warrant specific mention in a public filing.

Elsewhere in the filing Microsoft explains the open-source threat thus:

Under the non-commercial software model, open source software produced by loosely associated groups of unpaid programmers and made available for license to end users without charge is distributed by firms at nominal cost that earn revenue on complementary services and products, without having to bear the full costs of research and development for the open source software. The most notable example of open source software is the Linux operating system. While we believe our products provide customers with significant advantages in security and productivity, and generally have a lower total cost of ownership than open source software, the popularization of the non-commercial software model continues to pose a significant challenge to our business model, including recent efforts by proponents of open source software to convince governments worldwide to mandate the use of open source software in their purchase and deployment of software products. To the extent opens source software gains increasing market acceptance, sales of our products may decline, we may have to reduce the prices we charge for our products, and revenue and operating margins may consequently decline.

and then contrasts with the Microsoft way:

Since our inception, our business model has been based upon customers agreeing to pay a fee to license software developed and distributed by us. Under this commercial software model, software developers bear the costs of converting original ideas into software products through investments in research and development, offsetting these costs with the revenue received from the distribution of their products. We believe the commercial software model has had substantial benefits for users of software, allowing them to rely on our expertise and the expertise of other software developers that have powerful incentives to develop innovative software that is useful, reliable, and compatible with other software and hardware. In recent years, there has been a growing challenge to the commercial software model.

The major surface appeal of open-source software is that it is free. Well, there is no such thing as a free lunch and I do wonder how many CFO and CEO role players in the worlds largest companies have stopped to consider that adopting an open-source strategy is effectively insourcing the software development and maintenance costs and overheads, many of which are unquantifiable, and which were previously outsourced to Microsoft for a known annual fee.

Nevertheless, it seems that open-source, and specifically Linux, is a real and present danger to the worlds most profitable company. So where is Microsoft going to be focusing it's considerable resources in the future? The clue is in four of the remaining nine Key Market Opportunities:

• Creating non-PC consumer electronics in areas such as mobile phones, handheld devices, home entertainment and TV;
  
• Delivering compelling entertainment experiences in areas such as music, TV, movies, photos, and games;
• Expanding online advertising, and advances in search, music and other information services;
• Delivering integrated communications services for consumers and information workers.

It would seem that Bill's band intend to take on Nokia with the development of handheld electronics, compete with Apple's focus of media and entertainment, challenge Google's dominance of searching, and challenge the unified messaging and communications territory of the world's telecoms networks. For the first time since they faulteringly entered the mobile market, Microsoft will be moving into new areas where it is severely on the back foot - a stance they still maintain for mobile.

Just like the once all powerful Roman empire, the Redmond empire will now be simultaneously fighting considerable armies on several fronts, all of which know the territory a good deal better than them. Doubtless the Redmond empire has significant resources at its disposal with which to mount the charge but only the division of the company between Bill Gate's three favourite generals and the eventual success of the goths is left before the Redmond empire will begin it's decline and fall. Stay tuned.....

Digital Pack Rat

I am becoming a digital pack rat according to an article I surfed to this morning.

Let's look at the evidence:

• My photo library is already using over 28GB of space.
• I have 3 digital camera's the largest contains a 1GB storage card.
• I am about to install a 200GB disk in my office PC
• I am rapidly filling up my 40GB iPod with every CD I have ever purchased.
• I have purchased 4 CDs and 1 DVD already this month.
• The online music service to which I subscribe contains over 700,000 tracks on demand.
• My email, which is the first thing and last thing I check each day, archives goes back to 1998 and as a result my Outlook.pst file is currently a whopping 1.75GB

Now, given that my career requires me to handle lots of different information streams, and that some of those photos have already earned me money, I suppose I can be excused for being quite so enthusiastic in my creation and storage of digital stuff. I do think, however, it is probably time for me to have a clear out. I could start off by putting some of my email into an archive on CD, and categorising my pictures a little more intelligently than their current chronological sequence. I have been researching the tools that might be available and I have found that what I I need is software that helps me organise my music and photos. What I need is something like iPhoto and iTunes. What I need is iLife.

Oh goody, I think I have just thought of a justification to buy an iMac.

Where Was God?

I have just listened to Dr Rowan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury, attempting, and to my ears failing, to explain why God allowed the atrocities which occurred yesterday in the bloody climax of the Russian School siege.

In a measured, reasoned and respectful interview (quite a rarity these days for the Today programme) the BBC journalist, John Humphrys, managed again and again to corner the Archbishop leaving the latter floundering to provide an answer.

At one point the Archbishop quoted a biblical text that the punishment for the terrorist should be a "millstone tossed around his neck and was tossed to the depths of the sea" (Matthew 18:6). Humphrys responded by asking if he was recommending that the terrorists should face the death sentence, Williams floundered and eventually suggested that a life sentence would be appropriate. This volte face leads this listener to wonder if the head of the Church of England was teaching that Christians should not interpret any biblical text too literally.

The interview ranged across many other issues including why God allowed the situation to happen. Dr Williams resorted to the old Christian chestnut of "God permits man to have free will". But free will means choice, and what choice did those little children have when God allowed the powerful to subjugate, punish, torture and kill innocents?

"Where was God yesterday?", asked Humphrys. "You would need to look for him in the small acts of kindness", came the answer, "larger children putting arms around smaller ones; one mother comforting another".

And that was the best the leader of the church could come up with to lead and guide his flock. Let me put my interpretation of this interview in a nutshell - God permits evil-doers to inflict terrible suffering so that victims may express God's love to each other.

How is your faith in God today? Mine is severely shaken, as it freqently is these days. But worse than that, after this morning's performance, my already low respect for England's formal church and Christianity in general is in tatters.

(Edit: 23:25pm - the whole sorry interview is now temporarily available for us to listen again. Requires RealPlayer)

XP SP2

All of my computers keep telling me that I should be downloading and installing Windows XP Service Pack 2. I have not been doing so because of stories which promise failures and disasters. The unavailability of my PC would directly impact my income stream and so I have been delaying. However, my business partner successfully completed an upgrade this week so I think it may be ok to proceed.

The sun is shining, it is a beautiful day, and nothing can possibly go wrong today. So I have therefore decided to go ahead and download all 96mb and install this morning.

If I don't update my blog for several days, you know why!

It's Alive

Hurrah for me! I have finally, after some months of trying, managed to get Blogrolling to recognise when my Blog has been updated.

It seems that if you stop blogging for a while they drop you off their list to ping on a regular basis. Only by concerted blogging for the past couple of months, and a manual ping every time, have they now put this blog back on the list for regular checking.

Bush By Numbers

Timed perfectly to coincide with the conclusion of the Republican conference in New York, The Independent had today published an extract from Graydon Carter's new book, What We've Lost.

The extract details in numerical data how America has been influenced, and how it has changed in the term of the current president.

Carter, who is the Editor of Vanity Fair first published a shorter list of statistics back in November 2003 pointing out some of Bush's most dubious accomplishments during his tenure as president.

Judging by this updated list I think Carter's book will put forward a more adult and reasoned version of the message Michael Moore is now failing to deliver as he continues to undermine his own credibility.

From the current list I offer as highlights.

0 = Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of the Union addresses.

73 = Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his three State of the Union addresses.

83 = Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change) in his three State of the Union addresses.

0 = Number of times Bush mentioned Saudi Arabia in his three State of the Union addresses.

0 = Number of minutes that President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the assistant Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, the former chairman of the Defence Policy Board, Richard Perle, and the White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove ­ the main proponents of the war in Iraq ­served in combat (combined).

0 = Number of principal civilian or Pentagon staff members who planned the war who have immediate family members serving in uniform in Iraq.

8 = Number of members of the US Senate and House of Representatives who have a child serving in the military.

10 = Number of days that the Pentagon spent investigating a soldier who had called the President "a joke" in a letter to the editor of a Newspaper.

But perhaps the four most telling statistics are these:

2 = Percentage of the world's population that is British.

2 = Percentage of the world's oil used by Britain.

5 = Percentage of the world's population that is American.

25 = Percentage of the world's oil used by America.

Everything else just flows on from there really.

The Independent article has the whole sorry list. I really hope that someone, somewhere is compiling a similar list on Tony Blair and his achievements since coming to office.

The Day of the Yahoo

My parents and their neighbours have had trouble with kids throwing apples at the houses. On the weekend Dad confronted one of the scallywags - big mistake. On Sunday night they had a single apple through one of their leaded lights. Last night half an orchard's worth arrived through both the upstairs and downstairs bay windows causing nearly £200 of window replacement damage.

Dad has spent most of the day talking to the police, a local county councilors and victim support. It seems that the Thames Valley police are confident that they know who is doing the vandalism, but are powerless to act without catching them in the act. This isn't going to happen because the local Police station closes at 10pm, and the attacks (there have been lots in the village) are happening at 10:30 - when the perpetrators know that the nearest law enforcement is a 30 minute drive from the next town. It is just this sought of short sighted police thinking that leads to neighbourhood watch becoming vigilantism.

Thanks to Dad's persistance with the county councilor Thames Valley Police are now going to put a patrol car in their village - but only for the next 4 nights. Hopefully they will catch the vandals in the act, but I suspect all that will happen will be that the crims suspend their activities until after the weekend.

The councilor has also told Dad that this all started in July when parents from the two nearest larger towns started bringing their kids into their village in the evenings and leaving them there to "get them away from the trouble in the towns"! Given that there is nothing to do in a tiny village - no clubs or coffee bars - the kids have taken to roaming the streets and causing mayhem through acts of vandalism.

Not surprisingly with a second and more severe attack both Mum and Dad are somewhat shaken and are talking about canceling some evenings out that they have planned because they daren't leave the house empty. Once the windows are broken it is leaves them as a target for burglary. I have told them things will probably calm down once the schools go back on Monday. However, they are already worrying about Halloween.

The Police asked Dad if they could pass his name to the local newspaper. He said no (as would I) and has been adamant that he does not want any identifying details to appear in any published reporting of the incident. He is pretty sure that once this happens he will be getting crank phone calls and worse! The police have assured him that he will be referred to as "an old age pensioner" to which Dad took exception until I pointed out that it is an accurate description of someone over 70!

New Underground Map

I can think of a few London based bloggers who will find this new version of the Underground Map a very amusing sight. (via b3ta)

Watching the British

Regular visitors to Sapientum will know that I have a live webcam feed which is online pretty much most of the time while I am in the UK.

Whilst noodling around on the web over the recent bank holiday I wondered if everyone was having the same bad weather as the folks here in Oxford and so I went to look for live webcams in other UK cities. Having completed the searches and made the time consuming navigation to each of them it occurred to me that it would be quite a useful tool to be able to get a single consolidated view of lots of different webcams from all over the UK.

After an hour of surfing, and a lot of very fiddly HTML editing, I present you with....

Sapientum's realtime webcam view of the UK

If you have a UK based webcam which is online much of the time, and you would like it to be included in my webcam gallery, please drop a note in my comments box and I will add you.