notes: September 2009

Picking fights with software

My latest for The Morning News is an arrogant prod at Apple's Genius technology, as built into iTunes and iPods and probably soon embedded inside the file system of OS X itself. All the mixes it makes for me are depressingly predictable, and I think human beings can do a lot better.

And here 'tis: OK Genius.

Friday, September 18, 2009
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The Eighth Doctor on iPlayer

There's a bunch of Doctor Who radio stories being repeated on BBC7 at the moment, all of them featuring the Eighth Doctor. I've not heard any of these before and they're quite fun because (a) they sound more like "old" style Who, with mentions of Time Lords who're still around etc, and (b) it makes a change for the boy to listen to these and not the Famous Five stories he's been addicted to for the past couple of years.

Thursday, September 17, 2009
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Claire Boobbyer, travel writer and photographer

Like a lot of students, I spent two and half years pissing about and then knuckled down for the final six months to do some proper work. During those final months I remember visiting my friend Claire Boobbyer in the house she shared in southern Cambridge. We sat in her room drinking tea and I admired her Amstrad. She'd bought it second hand so she could churn out some articles.

Claire was a woman with a plan. She wanted to go into journalism and was already doing something about, practicing her writing and sending articles off to publishers of newspapers and magazines.

The conversation turned, as conversations did in those days, to what we were all going to do post-college. I said I didn't have a clue. And Claire said: "Why don't you try journalism? You'd be good at that."

So there you are, folks. It's all her fault. It was Claire's suggestion that got me thinking about journalism as a career, that resulted in my applying for a post-graduate journalism course, that got me my first job, that got me my second job, that sent me into freelancing, that got me here today.

Claire's career started in a similar way but went off in different directions. She became a writer and editor of travel guide books. She's done several now, mainly in South East Asia and Central America, particularly Cuba.

What Claire doesn't know about Cuba isn't worth knowing. If I'm ever lucky enough to be planning a trip there, Claire will be the first person I consult for advice.

Labels: life

Tuesday, September 15, 2009
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Mouse for lunch

We're in the garden, and our neighbour's cat arrives to say hello.

B calls me: "Dad! Jeeves has caught a rat!"

It's not a rat, it's a mouse. Already dead, but knowing Jeeves, it didn't die slowly. He enjoys playing with his prey. He'll catch a rodent and allow it to escape once or twice, but every time catch up with it easily, and whack it with his paw. Just before he kills, the prey usually stays still for a while. Alive, but either too terrified, or too injured, to move.

We step closer, and Jeeves moves round, as if trying to show us what he's caught. See how clever I am? he says.

Then he bends his head down, picks up the little mouse corpse, and delicately bites its head off.

I glance at Barney, thinking that he might be upset. But he's quite calm.

"Well, that's the head gone," he remarks. Indeed.

Jeeves eats the head, making horrific crunching noises as the skull is pulverised by his strong jaws. Crrunch, crrunch, crrunch. Gone. Another bite removes the front half of the torso, including the front legs. He drops the rear half of the mouse on the patio. A tiny teaspoon of blood spatters the gravel.

Next, Jeeves very carefully licks the open end of the mouse's body. It's not clear what he's doing here, but he is very experienced at this; he knows exactly how to proceed. After the licks, he starts on the rear half. He doesn't use his paws at all, just his mouth. He's not chewing, he's dissecting. He turns the rear end of the corpse around, and eats from the tail end. Down it goes, the rear legs follow.

And what's left, very deliberately and very clearly, is the intestines, and one or two other organs. A liver, perhaps; I'm not sure. They glisten on the stones. Jeeves walks away from them and proudly curls himself around my ankles. Barney watches him, while I look at the still-warm mouse innards he has left behind, and wonder what I'm going to do with them.

Jeeves wanders off, nonchalant and full up. See? See how clever I am? he purrs.

Well, you would, wouldn't you?

Labels: life, writing

Monday, September 14, 2009
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How to avoid running out of space on Gmail

Danny Sullivan found himself in a rare predicament: he ran out of space on his Gmail account, and had to jump through all sorts of hoops to delete old, useless messages and free some space up.

As Danny points out, this rather goes against the Google promise that you never need to delete an email ever again.

Indeed, Google makes a point of encouraging people not to delete. Although there's a delete button in the Gmail interface now, there wasn't for a long time. Google much prefers it if you archive, rather than delete.

But I delete all the time. I delete a lot of stuff, and I always have done, because I don't want to get into the same position that Danny found himself in.

My simple rule is this: I don't keep anything that's archived elsewhere.

So, all mailing list traffic gets binned. Each list has an archive on the web, so I can search that for old messages if necessary. Similarly, notifications from web services all get binned. Once I'm notified, there's no need for me to keep them. News alerts, new Twitter followers, calendar reminders, Facebook updates, Flickr comments, all of that - it all gets trashed.

The only stuff I keep is stuff that I actually need to: messages that were sent to me, and contain things that are not going to be archived anywhere else.

Labels: rant, tech

Monday, September 14, 2009
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Current reading - Bending Heaven, by Jessica Kane

Saturday, September 05, 2009
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Dodgy hoodie boy

Mmm dodgy

It keeps me warm as my office gets the Autumn evening chills.

Labels: photos

Tuesday, September 01, 2009
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