Theres something quite wrong about outsourcing your grieving
ETA: A response from Surrey Grave Care…which makes me feel like I was being a bit negative above
Neil Hopcroft
A digital misfit
Linkblast
Book review: Cyberselfish by Paulina Gorsook
“A critical romp through the terribly libertarian world of high tech”
I don’t know what happened to Paulina, but she seems to have suffered somehow at the hands of a someone she thinks represents all techno-libertarians.
This book describes the views of a small subset of people who have managed to get the wrong end of the stick about libertarianism, and expanded that view to cover pretty much anyone who works in the hightech industries. It describes some shocking examples of social irresponsibility and inability to comprehend that there is a need for social structure provided by government. It also glosses over the fact that most people in the IT sector are just normal people, the ones you get to hear about are the oddballs, the extremists.
There is also, throughout the book, a bitter diatribe about the management of Wired magazine, and how they project their sexist and selfish worldview on those around them, and the industry as a whole. This seems to be related to Paulina having fallen out with the management.
It does raise some interesting points, about the disconnect some of us (high tech workers) feel from society, but it seems to make a point of misunderstanding the implications of that disconnect as being a symptom of either sexism or selfishness, or both.
All in all, not a very positive book.
Who should read this: nobody
(no poll for this one, I’m not going to waste your time by lending it to you)
Note: it would be useful to ask someone to help you at this stage.
…in the assembly of your three tier in-tray unit for A4 paper. This phrase is now no longer useful if it is applied in these kinds of situations.
It sucks to be me
After working yesterday I met up with beermat and company to go see AvenueQ. This is an odd show, a musical, but about people like me. Well, more about what would happen if the Muppets grew up and had to find a job in the real world but its written to feel like its about people like me.
The cast is made of around six or seven people, and there are more puppets, allowing an interesting divorcing of characters from people, though the voices stay consistently with one of the players even when the puppet is being controlled by another.
The show follows the story of a recent English graduate in his first days of ‘real life’, renting an apartment on Avenue Q, one of the cheapest bits of town, and his integration into life there. Theres a little use of animations (on TV screens around the theatre) alongside the real life action happening on the stage, theres still a long way to go before such media is integrated into the writing of shows, right now it seems like a bit of an afterthought, not necessary for the show.
All in all a worthwhile show, some catchy music and well acted.
Book review: Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
There was an April Fool report going around a couple of years back that Charlie Stross had transcended. Reading this book you can understand why. Its not particularly well written, in a formal literature sense, but it is full of people, and examines the clash of two very different civilisations. Both significantly advanced from our own, but one very much rooted in our materialist, capitalist mindset and one where most of the things we hold dear are no longer relevant.
At some level, its just more trash scifi, easy to read, not too taxing, introducing its concepts slowly, not assuming anything about the reader, at another level its got some depth of thought behind it, opening up two coherent world-views (or universe-views) and what each sees of the other. It is a step forward from what SL4-ers think of scifi, but its still a pre-singularity view.
Who should read this? Anyone who likes nice easy reading science fiction.
I know that most of the people who read what I say here are Livejournalers…but do any of you have any thoughts about other ‘blogging’ software? I’m considering setting up another blog covering a specific aspect of things I’m interested in, its inapproriate to be documented here among the useless trivia of my life.
So, anyone know anything about either software? and/or can you recommend somewhere to host it? I’ve got a domain already (dns supplied by easily, who are alright for cheap domains and could host too), it just needs to be directed to the new host.
I’d prefer to pay a (small) monthly or yearly charge for a reasonably well connected and managed virtual server than, say, host it on a corner of a machine that one of my friends has attached to the net (if I wanted that I could host it on the end of my DSL line).
“You install the codec, and maybe you see the video, and maybe you don’t, but guess what? You’ve been rootkitted! Now, on one level, that’s just the classic bait and switch/ trojan horse scenario, but the _details_ are quite interesting.”
Beautiful old wrecks (image heavy, dialup beware)
I owe somebody a mail (several somebodies, to be precise…comment here if you think you’re one of them) but I’ve forgotten how to say anything interesting.
Well, maybe its not quite that bad – conversing with someone in person is not so difficult because you can respond to what they are saying, ask them questions about it, find out why they care about something or what they think should happen, or whatever.
But when it comes to writing letters (or email) its far more difficult to drive a conversation without being self centred. What should I talk about in a world thats full of opinions that are more coherent and better stated than mine, in a world where the experiences are in technicolour to my shades of grey, where the experts really do know what they’re talking about.
Plenty for me to say, but why would I think that anyone wanted to pay attention to it.
So the Trading Standards raided the lockup again today, reckon they’d gotten a tip from one of the scallies at the Dog’n’Bucket, took away a bunch of decent stock, I’d got it cheap, mind, but it was quality gear, could ‘ardly tell it was a knock-off.