Dublin - Thu 8/3
Had a good weekend in Dublin from Friday night to Monday night. Flew from Glasgow after an interesting bus trip through Paisley and arrived at our hotel in Temple Bar after 11pm.
Saturday was spent doing the open top bus tour of the city (and nearly getting our heads blown off by the wind in Phoenix Park), then after an excellent lunch at The Oval Bar in Abbey Street we went to see the Book of Kells and Trinity College's Old Library, followed by a search in the wrong place for a Boxty bar before settling on a Gourmet Burger Kitchen.
On Sunday we went back on the open top bus but this time we stopped off, first at the Guinness Storehouse exhibition then at Kilmainham Jail. The Guinness exhibition is excellent, and I took advantage of the voucher to have my first ever sober pint of Guinness! The beef stew in the restaurant / canteen is also well worth the money.
After briefly stopping to admire the carriage horses we caught the bus along to Kilmainham Jail. This is the jail that was reopened to house the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, and where they were executed a few days later. The tour is well worth it, and the exhibition makes a decent attempt to explain the complex politics of the 1916-1924 period.
On Sunday night we went to see Simple Minds at the Olympia Theatre-a bit more intimate than the SECC where we last saw them! The band were in fine form, although some members of the audience were more interested in getting well drunk or videoing the performance or the crowd than in participating or (heavens above) listening. Ended the night with another pint of Guinness - when in Rome!
Monday was spent going tourist phot0graph crazy along the banks of the Liffey, and buying mementoes and gifts for family at home. Uneventful flight home but swapping Euros back to pounds managed to leave my passport at the airport - police called when I was lr route home so had to go back tor it later in the week.
All in all a good fun trip -but Still plenty left to do on return trips in future!
Saturday 17 March 2012
Tuesday 28 June 2011
Wotsthefeckinpointitis,part 3968
Wotsthefeckinpointitis, n, dawning realisation of the pointlessness of much "normal" daily activity.
I have been stuck for the last few days/week with a bad case of wotsthefeckinpointitis. Huge numbers of regular, "normal" activities that are part of the normal human routine of life in a modern Western "civilisation" seem to have huge question marks hanging over them. It brought back to mind a specific incident in a planning meeting with a major IT vendor.
We were implementing serious amounts of software, and putting together significant hardware and networking to make it all work. We had convened a suitably large and important meeting to discuss the project. Staff from our organisation travelled from all over central Scotland to attend, and representatives from the vendor travelled up from the south of England, all to discuss our terribly important project.
Part way through the meeting (which as you'd probably expect had actually turned into a review of stuff we'd already spoken about previously) I found myself completely detached from the whole thing, looking out the window to the hedges and shrubs outside the building. I suddenly found myself thinking, what if aliens landed outside right now, and came and looked in the window to see what these human things got up to ? What would they think ? And the answer that came to mind was:
"You are all completely insane."
Here we were, over a dozen well- to highly-paid people, all pretty well educated and experienced in what we do, sitting around a table and talking utter bollocks at each other for several hours. At the end of it, the sum of human knowledge and endeavour would have increased by not a single jot. If anything, the sum of human happiness would have decreased. The people who had travelled up from southern England would have left home at some lunatic hour (4am ? earlier ?) to drive to an airport to catch a plane to get a taxi to land up at our office, then catch a taxi to the airport to get a plane south to drive home and get home at some equally lunatic hour at night. What does that sort of stupidity do to a home life ? Or even a life that doesn't end up being overwhelmed by a job which, at the end of the day, is itself pretty pointless ?
After all, yes, it was a large project, and it would cost lots of money and time and effort, but at the end of the day it was simply an optimisation; nothing that wouldn't have happened before would have suddenly started happening simply because of this project. Maybe later, maybe someday, but equally maybe never. The things that needed to happen would have happened anyway, with or without megaproject. Maybe not as quickly, maybe not a slickly, but they would still happen.
And yet here we were with a room full of people all, to some greater or lesser extent, blowing their lives to smithereens in the service of megaproject. Because that's what we do. We work. We work harder, run faster, push further, push push push.
And then we all end up dead.
And at the end of it all, what was the fucking point ? What lasting, worthwhile monument did we build up with our crazy, frantic, lunatic endeavours ? Servers that would be decommissioned in a few years, software that would be upgraded, fiddled and changed to the point that it was like the original Roman spade that had only had four new handles and three new blades. All gone, and no doubt all replaced by more work done at the same crazy pace. And at every step, more and more time poured down the black hole called "job", never to be regained or reused for anything that might actually increase anybody's happiness or self worth or be of actual benefit to mankind.
Because every second spent worrying about some innately trivial but apparently important detail at work is one less second of life. One second closer to the long sleep. A second you can't get back, saying "actually that wasn't really worth the worrying about at all, could I have that second again and maybe read some classic literature/paint my masterpiece/write a love poem/pot some plants in the garden/try to perfect the golf swing/etc ?"
I really do wish we could just stop. Stop the running, jostling, shoving, pushing, driving, hurrying, scuttling. Stop. Talk to kids, talk to the neighbours, sit in the garden and watch things grow and get utterly sloshed on home brew or whatever. Take back the time and just live at a more normal, more *human* pace. Think about things that matter, and let the things that don't matter take care of themselves.
Not everything that is countable counts. Not everything that counts can be counted.
I have been stuck for the last few days/week with a bad case of wotsthefeckinpointitis. Huge numbers of regular, "normal" activities that are part of the normal human routine of life in a modern Western "civilisation" seem to have huge question marks hanging over them. It brought back to mind a specific incident in a planning meeting with a major IT vendor.
We were implementing serious amounts of software, and putting together significant hardware and networking to make it all work. We had convened a suitably large and important meeting to discuss the project. Staff from our organisation travelled from all over central Scotland to attend, and representatives from the vendor travelled up from the south of England, all to discuss our terribly important project.
Part way through the meeting (which as you'd probably expect had actually turned into a review of stuff we'd already spoken about previously) I found myself completely detached from the whole thing, looking out the window to the hedges and shrubs outside the building. I suddenly found myself thinking, what if aliens landed outside right now, and came and looked in the window to see what these human things got up to ? What would they think ? And the answer that came to mind was:
"You are all completely insane."
Here we were, over a dozen well- to highly-paid people, all pretty well educated and experienced in what we do, sitting around a table and talking utter bollocks at each other for several hours. At the end of it, the sum of human knowledge and endeavour would have increased by not a single jot. If anything, the sum of human happiness would have decreased. The people who had travelled up from southern England would have left home at some lunatic hour (4am ? earlier ?) to drive to an airport to catch a plane to get a taxi to land up at our office, then catch a taxi to the airport to get a plane south to drive home and get home at some equally lunatic hour at night. What does that sort of stupidity do to a home life ? Or even a life that doesn't end up being overwhelmed by a job which, at the end of the day, is itself pretty pointless ?
After all, yes, it was a large project, and it would cost lots of money and time and effort, but at the end of the day it was simply an optimisation; nothing that wouldn't have happened before would have suddenly started happening simply because of this project. Maybe later, maybe someday, but equally maybe never. The things that needed to happen would have happened anyway, with or without megaproject. Maybe not as quickly, maybe not a slickly, but they would still happen.
And yet here we were with a room full of people all, to some greater or lesser extent, blowing their lives to smithereens in the service of megaproject. Because that's what we do. We work. We work harder, run faster, push further, push push push.
And then we all end up dead.
And at the end of it all, what was the fucking point ? What lasting, worthwhile monument did we build up with our crazy, frantic, lunatic endeavours ? Servers that would be decommissioned in a few years, software that would be upgraded, fiddled and changed to the point that it was like the original Roman spade that had only had four new handles and three new blades. All gone, and no doubt all replaced by more work done at the same crazy pace. And at every step, more and more time poured down the black hole called "job", never to be regained or reused for anything that might actually increase anybody's happiness or self worth or be of actual benefit to mankind.
Because every second spent worrying about some innately trivial but apparently important detail at work is one less second of life. One second closer to the long sleep. A second you can't get back, saying "actually that wasn't really worth the worrying about at all, could I have that second again and maybe read some classic literature/paint my masterpiece/write a love poem/pot some plants in the garden/try to perfect the golf swing/etc ?"
I really do wish we could just stop. Stop the running, jostling, shoving, pushing, driving, hurrying, scuttling. Stop. Talk to kids, talk to the neighbours, sit in the garden and watch things grow and get utterly sloshed on home brew or whatever. Take back the time and just live at a more normal, more *human* pace. Think about things that matter, and let the things that don't matter take care of themselves.
Not everything that is countable counts. Not everything that counts can be counted.
Monday 17 January 2011
It's been a while...
... and to celebrate, here's a nice picture...
Yep, it's my Newton 2000U, caught on my mobile (at a rather jaunty angle I must admit) at Newton railway station just outside Glasgow. A Newton at Newton, you might say ;)
Yep, it's my Newton 2000U, caught on my mobile (at a rather jaunty angle I must admit) at Newton railway station just outside Glasgow. A Newton at Newton, you might say ;)
Thursday 3 June 2010
Changes - Tue 1/6
Bah. In the middle of rebuilding a PowerBook if the wrong time to discover that your IM provider has decided to go all secure and disable non-SSL logins, and that yo,r Newton IM client won't let you suffix the server name with an alternative port number. Oh well. Goodbye hot-chilli.net, hello neko.im. In other bigger news, the Mondeo has decided to give up the ghost. Well, very annoyingly the shell of the car would keep going for a good while yet, but it has blown the replacement engine I got for it last year, so it really needs to be replaced now. Thankfully dad qualifies for a Motability car, so we now have one on order, so we have to wait for it to arrive. MG is in for its MoT test. Failed as expected, but not as horribly as feared. Should have it back soon, complicated by next weeks trip to London for the UK Ingres Users Association conference. But that's for next time!
Bah. In the middle of rebuilding a PowerBook if the wrong time to discover that your IM provider has decided to go all secure and disable non-SSL logins, and that yo,r Newton IM client won't let you suffix the server name with an alternative port number. Oh well. Goodbye hot-chilli.net, hello neko.im. In other bigger news, the Mondeo has decided to give up the ghost. Well, very annoyingly the shell of the car would keep going for a good while yet, but it has blown the replacement engine I got for it last year, so it really needs to be replaced now. Thankfully dad qualifies for a Motability car, so we now have one on order, so we have to wait for it to arrive. MG is in for its MoT test. Failed as expected, but not as horribly as feared. Should have it back soon, complicated by next weeks trip to London for the UK Ingres Users Association conference. But that's for next time!
Friday 23 April 2010
We Pray For Your Election - ask General MacArthur...
So, it's election time again. Thoughts on the parties, as twittered at various points recently...
- The Labour Party (or specifically, "New Labour") : traitors
- At least you know where you are with the Conservatives - on the wrong end of a kicking
- The Liberal Democrats : an attempt to mean something to everyone that ends up meaning nothing to anyone.
- So what's left ? Probably the Greens, or the Scottish Socialists if they can keep it together this week and field a worthwhile candidate...
I still think the only way to get the general public to re-engage with politics is to take politics out of the hands of professional politicians. Back in the day, when I were a lad (cue Largo from The New World) Labour MPs had done a real job for some time, and probably come up through the union ranks as a shop steward, to councillor and eventually to MP. A Tory MP would likely have been in the military, or in business or perhaps gentleman farming. The point is, they would have done *something* in life that wasn't directly to do with politics, and would bring that knowledge and experience to bear on the issues of the day.
Now, we have a parliament crawling with solicitors and sundry others who have effectively made a career out of politics. Labour gets blasted for introducing new laws at a frightening rate, but the trend had started under previous Conservative administrations - when you have that many lawyers stuck in a room, with the ability to create new laws at the drop of a hat, they are going to churn out legislation like there's no tomorrow. The other problem with career politicians is that it gives inordinate power to the party whips; in much the same way that you don't go out of your way to tweak your boss's nose at work, you offend the whip at your career's peril - representing the genuine views of your constituents be damned, if the whip says how you should vote, that's the way you vote lest you be marked down as a "maverick", and that's your chance of a bench job gone for a burton.
Another problem, of the many facing British parliamentary democracy, is the fixation on the personality of the party leaders. This is because, although in your constituency you vote for your local MP to represent you and your neighbours in parliament, that is also effectively a vote for the leader of that MP's party. So what if you, say, think your local Tory MP is doing a fantastic job, but you really want a Labour government ? Well, you're stuffed in the British electoral system, basically.
And that's all before we get to the relative injustices of devolution, or the age old (and really comparatively irrelevant) saw about proportional representation. Or indeed, the position of the Church of England as an established church, or the constitutional awkwardness that would result if a Roman Catholic (or indeed a practicing Jew) became Prime Minister. (Thankfully there is no "Muslim Emancipation Act" to create similar problems for followers of Islam.)
So, what is to be done ? Well, we could start by taking politics back to grass roots level. We have effectively all colluded in allowing affairs to get to the state that they have - it's all to easy to say "I've done my bit - I voted" then step back and leave the elected to do as they will. The problem is that we all seem to have forgotten that we elect a government to do what *we* want *them* to do - not for *them* to tell *us* what to do.
The term "soviet" springs to mind. In its original form as a local or workplace council, rather than how it was deliberately overrun and perverted by the Bolsheviks, the soviet was a forum for members of a community or workplace to come together to discuss the issues of the day. We should create a similar mechanism to bring together workplaces and communities to give their views and opinions directly and regularly. A representative would be elected by those present at the soviet to take the decisions of that soviet to the next soviet up (e.g. from community to town to region to nation). That representative could (and indeed should) change every time the soviet had decisions or deliberations to pass on to the next tier. The representative would be fully accountable to ensure they gave the decisions of their soviet rather than their own opinions. To ensure attendance at soviets, possibly an increase in your local taxes if you miss three in a row ?
OK, so it's not exactly a thoroughly worked out proposal. But it would do something to get people back involved in politics again. Too many people say "I'm not political" - but the fact is that every action is in some way political, because politics is really about how a population interacts and decides - the term "politics" has been defined to count only "party politics" and this is part of the reason the ordinary "man on the Clapham omnibus" feels detached from the whole process.
All Power To The Soviets !
- The Labour Party (or specifically, "New Labour") : traitors
- At least you know where you are with the Conservatives - on the wrong end of a kicking
- The Liberal Democrats : an attempt to mean something to everyone that ends up meaning nothing to anyone.
- So what's left ? Probably the Greens, or the Scottish Socialists if they can keep it together this week and field a worthwhile candidate...
I still think the only way to get the general public to re-engage with politics is to take politics out of the hands of professional politicians. Back in the day, when I were a lad (cue Largo from The New World) Labour MPs had done a real job for some time, and probably come up through the union ranks as a shop steward, to councillor and eventually to MP. A Tory MP would likely have been in the military, or in business or perhaps gentleman farming. The point is, they would have done *something* in life that wasn't directly to do with politics, and would bring that knowledge and experience to bear on the issues of the day.
Now, we have a parliament crawling with solicitors and sundry others who have effectively made a career out of politics. Labour gets blasted for introducing new laws at a frightening rate, but the trend had started under previous Conservative administrations - when you have that many lawyers stuck in a room, with the ability to create new laws at the drop of a hat, they are going to churn out legislation like there's no tomorrow. The other problem with career politicians is that it gives inordinate power to the party whips; in much the same way that you don't go out of your way to tweak your boss's nose at work, you offend the whip at your career's peril - representing the genuine views of your constituents be damned, if the whip says how you should vote, that's the way you vote lest you be marked down as a "maverick", and that's your chance of a bench job gone for a burton.
Another problem, of the many facing British parliamentary democracy, is the fixation on the personality of the party leaders. This is because, although in your constituency you vote for your local MP to represent you and your neighbours in parliament, that is also effectively a vote for the leader of that MP's party. So what if you, say, think your local Tory MP is doing a fantastic job, but you really want a Labour government ? Well, you're stuffed in the British electoral system, basically.
And that's all before we get to the relative injustices of devolution, or the age old (and really comparatively irrelevant) saw about proportional representation. Or indeed, the position of the Church of England as an established church, or the constitutional awkwardness that would result if a Roman Catholic (or indeed a practicing Jew) became Prime Minister. (Thankfully there is no "Muslim Emancipation Act" to create similar problems for followers of Islam.)
So, what is to be done ? Well, we could start by taking politics back to grass roots level. We have effectively all colluded in allowing affairs to get to the state that they have - it's all to easy to say "I've done my bit - I voted" then step back and leave the elected to do as they will. The problem is that we all seem to have forgotten that we elect a government to do what *we* want *them* to do - not for *them* to tell *us* what to do.
The term "soviet" springs to mind. In its original form as a local or workplace council, rather than how it was deliberately overrun and perverted by the Bolsheviks, the soviet was a forum for members of a community or workplace to come together to discuss the issues of the day. We should create a similar mechanism to bring together workplaces and communities to give their views and opinions directly and regularly. A representative would be elected by those present at the soviet to take the decisions of that soviet to the next soviet up (e.g. from community to town to region to nation). That representative could (and indeed should) change every time the soviet had decisions or deliberations to pass on to the next tier. The representative would be fully accountable to ensure they gave the decisions of their soviet rather than their own opinions. To ensure attendance at soviets, possibly an increase in your local taxes if you miss three in a row ?
OK, so it's not exactly a thoroughly worked out proposal. But it would do something to get people back involved in politics again. Too many people say "I'm not political" - but the fact is that every action is in some way political, because politics is really about how a population interacts and decides - the term "politics" has been defined to count only "party politics" and this is part of the reason the ordinary "man on the Clapham omnibus" feels detached from the whole process.
All Power To The Soviets !
Tuesday 23 March 2010
nBlog & Me - Tue 23/3
Well, I can't say I didn't try. Over on the My Apple Newton blog (http://myapplenewton.blogspot.com/2010/03/nblog-update_14.html) there was an update that suggested that nBlog's Refresh Blog List function would work for brand new accounts on Blogger. So, I had a minor brainwave - create a new account, add that account as an author to the four blogs I update, refresh the list, and off we trot.
Sadly, it didn't work out that way. I created and added the account ok, changed the nBlog prefs and... nothing. No difference at all. So back to the old idea of reading the nBlog source code and either using SBM Utilities or writing some NewtonScript to create the soup entries.
At least the exercise got me the blog ids I'll need to create the soup entries.
In other Newt news, the 32Mb Compact Flash experiment is still going well. Write speeds are OK, reliability has been fine so it's all good so far!
Sadly, it didn't work out that way. I created and added the account ok, changed the nBlog prefs and... nothing. No difference at all. So back to the old idea of reading the nBlog source code and either using SBM Utilities or writing some NewtonScript to create the soup entries.
At least the exercise got me the blog ids I'll need to create the soup entries.
In other Newt news, the 32Mb Compact Flash experiment is still going well. Write speeds are OK, reliability has been fine so it's all good so far!
Wednesday 17 March 2010
Return Of The Flash - Wed 17/3
When I revived my Newtons, I made the foolish mistake of installing a 2 gbyte Compact Flash card as the default store in my "main" Newt. I partitioned it as 4 500 Mbyte stores and put different content in each one (apps in one, books in another etc) Everything started ok, but gradually things got slower and slower until they pretty much ground to a halt. Two things seemed to coincide - an increased use of Mail V, with a rather silly setup (multiple email accounts for a single owner slip) leading to lots of timeouts and reboots, and the 2010 problem making resetting the date and time every reboot both necessary and tedious. Add to that the 5 minutes between rebooting and the Newt becoming usable again and using the Newt was becoming a pain rather than a pleasure.
So, I admitted defeat, and went back to a trusty old 20mbyte card I had lying around. Suddenly restart times went from 5 minutes to 1 minute and fixing my Mail V setup to have separate owner slips for each email account dropped the number of timeouts and restarts. Joy to the world!
But I had got used to all that lovely space. I had no books on line any more. And then I started using PaperBoy for Usenet news, and suddenly needed space for articles.
Having bought the wrong kind of 32 mbyte Flash card, I decided to give Compact Flash another go. The reasoning being that the Newton wasn't really designed to have one 500 mbyte store, never mind four of them at the same time so it was a bit unreasonable to expect it to cope happily with that scenario. So, off to eBay I went and bought a job lot of old, small Compact Flash cards and installed a 32Mbyte card, partitioned into two 16 mbyte stores. So far, it has been working quite well - not as fast as linear Flash but not as horrific as the 2 gbyte card. Reboot time is more than the one minute with a 20 mbyte Flash card, but only about 1.5 - 2 minutes, and I have more packages installed. Who knows, I might get bold and try the 64 mbyte card that came in the lot at some point!
So, I admitted defeat, and went back to a trusty old 20mbyte card I had lying around. Suddenly restart times went from 5 minutes to 1 minute and fixing my Mail V setup to have separate owner slips for each email account dropped the number of timeouts and restarts. Joy to the world!
But I had got used to all that lovely space. I had no books on line any more. And then I started using PaperBoy for Usenet news, and suddenly needed space for articles.
Having bought the wrong kind of 32 mbyte Flash card, I decided to give Compact Flash another go. The reasoning being that the Newton wasn't really designed to have one 500 mbyte store, never mind four of them at the same time so it was a bit unreasonable to expect it to cope happily with that scenario. So, off to eBay I went and bought a job lot of old, small Compact Flash cards and installed a 32Mbyte card, partitioned into two 16 mbyte stores. So far, it has been working quite well - not as fast as linear Flash but not as horrific as the 2 gbyte card. Reboot time is more than the one minute with a 20 mbyte Flash card, but only about 1.5 - 2 minutes, and I have more packages installed. Who knows, I might get bold and try the 64 mbyte card that came in the lot at some point!
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