Neil Hopcroft
A digital misfit
Linkblast
…and a few more that escaped the last round:
Book review: War of the Worlds by HG Wells
It is interesting reading this book now that I’ve moved to the area in which much of it is set – the descriptions make it seem very much more rural than the sprawling commute belt I know.
While the story is familiar, from the Jeff Waynes version, the book gives a very different feel to the characters – for me at least – with many of them being weaker (as people, rather than as descriptions) and more broken in the book.
One of the important features is what is left out, there are big gaps in the narrative while the narrator is holed up in a tragic situation of some sort, there is also a somewhat uncomfortable ‘from my brothers eyes’ point of view for parts of the decay of London, which somehow doesn’t seems to fit into the flow.
I couldn’t help but thinking of the plight of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, there were certain parallels with the descriptions of destroyed parts of the city.
Who should read this book: sci-fi people, its one of the classics, and its a different experience to the audio version
I’d forgotten how nice the drive up the M40 to Oxford can be. Its a shame, then, that it was preceded by a queue on the M25. 25 minutes to move one junction, how do people tolerate that on a regular basis?
This years Venturefest was at the Said Business School, next to the station. I remember being intrigued by the building when I was living in Oxford, but never having a chance to see inside it. It attracted some controversy when it was first built, blood money buys some fairly fancy architecture – they seem to have taken a list of things that all the other colleges have and ticked all the boxes, theres a couple of quads, an amphitheatre, etc.
The conference itself seemed a little smaller than last year, but maybe it was just a bit more spread out – in my efforts to miss the traffic I missed a couple of the early morning talks. There were a few presenetations by companies seeking investment, who all seemed somehow doomed in their own ways, covering ground thats been explored before. But maybe they’ve got a new break on it.
Zigbee looks like an interesting technology, though I wonder about the wisdom of giving it a Hayes AT command set, easy to program for sure but most of us can handle HCI style abstractions without too much difficulty.
The highlight of the day was the keynote speech by Tim Smit, of Eden Project fame. Since I found out about the Eden Project I’ve been interested in the potential it has – it has always seemed like a very welcoming place when I’ve been there (admittedly only four or five times), built on a good set of values. And hearing Tim talking I started to understand why. He is a very disarming person, naive about business and project management, but not afraid to have a go. In some ways hes a bit of a hippy, but in many ways he’s not the kind of hippy I was expecting, he’s very pragmatic but within the framework of his ideals.
My respect for him went up while he was talking – and I already liked the things he has produced.
A worthwhile day out, though I was only amusing myself with the talk of hockey stick graphs and increasing ARPUs rather than actually getting involved in any of the business proper.
Linkblast extra
(Recovering from a couple of weeks on the end of dialup here is an extra large set of links)
Censored (worksafe)
Light-pick – imagine this mated with some POV writing, it’d only take a small accelerometer and bluetooth programability
Theres something depressingly cyclical about the kinds of arguments you have at this time of day:
(I’ve pre-watershedded the language a little, add your own colour if you feel it necessary)
Her: I can’t believe you asked anuver girl for er number, why’d’you ask er for er number?
Him: She was a policewoman, I was taking the micky
Being that one of the few emotions I understand is anger, this is something that gets to me, I find it especially difficult to sleep through.
All has gone quiet now, but I’ve ended up in this loop where I’m thinking “if someone NT can’t tell the difference between a joking around and something their girlfriend would be deeply upset and worried by, I don’t really stand a chance”.
And this is one of the big problems I have with relationships…nearly the only emotion I get from them is anger, and that anger is normally directed at me for not understanding the thing they’re upset about. Hearing this from the outside just reinforces that feeling.
Now I’m going to make hot chocolate and try sleeping again.
Linkblast: USB special
It started with the wearable keyboard…
…but I was distracted enough to go searching the site, whereupon I found what I think is a USB tail.
but that’s not ridiculous enough, so I found a Bluetoothbrush
I’m pondering the possibility of a housewarming party here in Leatherhead – having completely failed to get around to having one in Cambridge….if you can see this you’re welcome to come along, but first I would like to know who is about when.
Back online again now. And I’ve eaten too much cheese over the last few days.
These two facts are not related in any way.
Book review: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
This is a book that has been sitting in my in-queue for a long time, I’ve finally gotten around to reading it.
Eric takes us on a tour of the fast food industry, from the origins of the modern hamburger, via the sweatshop kitchens and slaughterhouses, to where he thinks the future of the industry should be.
A lot of people I know have read this book, and have been impressed enough by it to comment on it – indeed its described on its cover as ‘a shocking expose’ by the Evening Standard.
What I don’t understand, though, is why anyone is surpised by its contents. For sure it doesn’t paint the rosiest of pictures of the industry, but we surely can’t be surprised that corners are being cut when we’re prepared to buy meals for kinds of prices they charge. I found little in the book to be shocked by, or indeed, that I didn’t know before, sure theres a lot of good detail that I wasn’t aware of, but none of it essential to the informed debate about the perils of fast food. There is an inevitable race to the bottom where competition is based largely on price – “He who buys on price along is this mans lawful prey”.
Indeed, the book seems to set out to shock its prissy middle class ‘mc-hater’ readership into further action rather than actually be some kind of manual for the kinds of people it is looking down upon to escape their trap.
Who should read this book: anyone who eats fast food on a regular basis
Who actually reads this book: everyone else