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Detailed profiles of each region and country of Europe(categories: Abkhazia Ajaria Albania Andorra Armenia Austria Azerbaijan Belarus Belgium Bosnia-Hercegovina Bulgaria Chechnya Commonwealth Corsica Croatia Cyprus Czech_Republic Dagestan Denmark Estonia European_Union Faroe_Islands Finland Former_Yugoslav_Republic_of_Macedonia France Georgia Germany Gibraltar Greece Greenland Hungary IAEA Iceland Ingushetia Ireland Italy Kosovo Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Milosevic Moldova Monaco Nato Netherlands North_Ossetia Norway OSCE Poland Portugal Romania Russia San_Marino Serbia_and_Montenegro Slovakia Slovenia South_Ossetia Soviet_Union Spain Sweden Switzerland The Trans-Dniester Turkey UN UN_Security_Council Ukraine UnitedNations United_Kingdom Vatican WTO World_Trade_Organization bbc enlargement europe european news profile timeline)
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compelling and somewhat scary programme on the possibility of a flu virus based pandemic
November 2004 Archives
I saw Nick Cave at Brixton Academy last week, see some photos from the gig. For a gangly six foot skinny bloke, does that man rock! An intense bundle of emotion and excitement. The violinist came a close second, though...
A really fantastic experience, whcih made his music feel much more real and powerful. The photos give some of the sense of theatre from the gig, but the music is still ringing in my head from it. XFM seem to agree.
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useful for those intending to visit the Apple Store opening this Saturday on Regent Street, in London
I've been mentally connecting a few things together in my mind over the past few days, all of them pointing at a question about sense of worth, recognition or achievement, each article comes from a different stance, yet I see them pointing to the same place.
The first is the New Statesman essay from the 8th November issue, this is about the lack of other measures of public value, save money that our culture promotes. Celebrity is just another aspect of this, many people are famous for money or association, Heat is full of them.
Sunday evening, last week, there was an episode of Panorama on the notion of a Winner takes all Britain, exporing the consequences of following the commercial model to its fullest extent. The website for the programme contains a mine of interesting facts and some interesting opinions on the type of society this will create, I think I side with Professor Robert Frank.
Lastly in this triptych of prompts there is the new report from Demos, Tom Loosemore drew my attention to the report on the new ProAms. These people are the groups who in their spare time make offerings to the world of professional quality, but not as part of their full time employment. There is a launch event hosted by Demos on the 30th November. A short overview by Charles Leadbeater in Fast Company is available, prior to publication of the full report, at the end of the month.
I'm all for this rise of the amateur again, it reminds me of a more egalitarian view on the gentleman explorer or scientist of the late 1800s, with not only the rich men allowed to participate. One drawback is that you do end up working all the time, I'm often seen on the train with my powerbook perched on my lap hacking away at some template code or some blog post.
The people that Demos highlight, the ProAms, are key to changing this view on the world and moving the point of recognition from wealth to a more rounded view of achievement. The competition is strong though from the tabloid and celeb-based press and the notion that someone is "worth" an amount of money. Both of these mitigate against a wider definition of the achievement of an individual.
On the whole this philosophy is about using your talents and abilities for personal satisfaction and for the benefit of others, rather than for pure personal gain or for the benefit of some shareholders. Those of us lucky enough to be able to work and play in the same areas have a small advantage, but there is no reason why we cannot all participate. It is only a small step beyond the volunteer of the past, just a more focused participation.
To tie all of this together a bit, perhaps if we all did a bit more ProAm work then we'd see less of the world being about money and worth. Perhaps a bit more about what people did or contributed to local communities and interest groups. There is also an interesting aspect of this about how those in their 60s and older can contribute their skills and experience, hopefully in a manner that gives them consultancy income, but to the benefit of all. Mentoring small companies is something that I know Lucy's Dad and mine both do. There is something beyond working in a charity shop that the generation who went to university in the 60s can offer.
It is very idealistic, but I'd certainly prefer to live in a world where value was placed on contribution and knowledge rather than on brand labels and conspicuous consumption.
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on the politics behind the New Statesman, Blair vs Brown, the coming election and New Labour
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home computer initiative, a tax break giving tax and national insurance back on lease managed computer purchase, needs to be organised by your company
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the opening gambit in the anti opensource patent battle, lots of detail, worth reading this post.
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RSS scraping web application that generates a list of the top 100 words per hour and then creates a 10x10 matrix of the associated images
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fifty percent more than now in 300 years
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MacOSX hints and tips for diagnosing system failures
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tracking products placed in films
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analysis piece on the role of the exit poll from Dick Morris
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funny news grab
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John Peel on why current radio playlists are dull and too safe, we need more risk. A good attitide to remember
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Applying the open source model to other areas
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calculator for your training pace based on recent race performance
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Howard criticizes Blair over Iraq and Karl Rove denies invite for Howard to meet Bush, strange times
Some immediate reactions to Delicious Library, which is a new product for cataloging all the books, music and dvds you possess. It is a nice application with a simple concept. Use the unique identifiers present in UPC or ISBN codes and do a product lookup on amazon.com. I guess that they make money on amazon affiliate income too, through recommending similar books. The application is priced at 40 dollars, which is fair enough, but to make a real use of it you also need an iSight or a bluetooth based barcode reader, typing in 11 and 13 digit strings will get dull quite quickly.
I'd really like a mechanism to sync my amazon wishlist with Delicious Library, the ability to get my wishlist on my iPod would be a real benefit. Related to that I'd like a mechanism to visually flag books I have on loan from others or aspirational items from my wishlist. The wishlist thing was one of my first reactions to the product.
In terms of the application UI, there is no obvious mechanism to stop a net search for information, you get the spinning cursor, but no stop control. Also when the search returns no information there is no clear prompt on what to do next, a failed UPC search gives no indication of why it failed.
I think that this is particularly apparent for CDs, though this is probably a uk product UPC issue. Thus getting support for amazon.co.uk as soon as possible would be fantastic for those of us in the UK.
I think the shelves and collections metaphors will work pretty well, one suggestion they have is to mimic actual shelves in your house, though there is an obvious maintainance issue with this. Genre based or author based smartlists (like iTunes) might be another means for controlling the data. Lucy and I have (guesses) 3-400 CDs and probably over a thousand books, plus 40 odd DVDs.
I think that this usage profile for books is different to the one for music and the same interfaces might not be enough. Music is a much more fluid and easily accessible medium, it is random access and supports repeated enjoyable access. A book is often read once then put on the shelf, but it might be a reference text or recommended to another person. Another competing programme that springs to mind, other than the media libraries, is Endnote, but this is more focused on academic papers rather than whole books.
Lastly, I share my book library and music collection with my wife, we'll both want a copy of delicious library, but with the ability to sync libraries or put the list on two different iPods. A license scheme for a couple would be great, or if the license applied to a single library, but multiple clients. I realise that this is quite a jump in terms of complexity, as data syncing is really hard.
On the whole I like it, but I can see that it will take some time to setup and get in to the swing of it. The benefits of having a record of all of my books and music with me all the time are clear to me. It is a nice realization of the ideas in projects like Aura from Marc Smith and others at Microsoft Research.
It'll take me a few weeks to build up a library and understand how it will affect my behaviour. I'm hoping that it will solve those conversations where I know I have read a book on X and want to recommend it to someone, but the moment passes by the time I get home.
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make wiki links to wikipedia for any capitalised words in a text document
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excellent film, really worth watching
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analysis on the bush blair relationship
So, it looks very likely that Bush has won, all down to Ohio today. It was 2000 all over again, Democrat win seemed likely early on, then one by one states reporting with no change. I went to sleep at 2:30am and was feeling dimly optimistic, by 6:30 when I woke the writing was on the wall. I do believe in democracy and so, as Bush has won the public vote, he should be the President. The increased turn out at least might see a long term lift in the numbers of people participating in politics, which can only be for the better.
Lucy and I chatted about the outcome this morning and some things we came up with were, as follows
On the plus side, Bush now has to sort out Afghanistan and the mess in Iraq. Also within the next four years, something will have to happen with the prisoners in Guantanimo, at least you'd hope so.
There is also the question of the enormous debt he has run up, by offering tax cuts and fighting expensive wars. The faltering US economy is a key issue for him to address, more of the same will ruin the US, health care provision was a strong issue in the election and perhaps he'll come under pressure to address this. On that note, the huge debt means massive foreign capital is needed to fund it, this means a likely medium term discounted dollar, so the dollar looks set long term to fall 30 percent, so cheaper Canon cameras and Powerbooks...
A Hillary Clinton win is looking likely in 2008, she is a charismatic Senator and if she stood, might well do better than any future Republican candidate, certainly she'd not need to establish a reputation with the American people.
Finally it seems more likely that Europe will unite to respond to a second Bush term, which might lead to a ratified constitution and a stronger future for a coherent Europe.
On the other hand, it is likely to lead to a more insular US, focusing on scaring the life out of its inhabitants and securing its borders, by fighting wars "over there". I think the Artic and Alaskan wilderness is screwed, the climate with Cheney in charge is likely to be more ruined. Kyoto looks like a distant hope now, even with Russia looking likely to ratify it.
Movements to build a collaborative democratic set of world institutions like the International Criminal Court and a revitalised United Nations will have to take a back seat, as Bush is unlikely to want to engage.
A more faith based conservative right in charge will darkens the outlook for gay rights, abortion, immigration. Virtually all the states voted against gay marriage for example.
I'd along with many others like to see a US which will stop wanting to "lead" the world and sit down and collaborate with the rest of the world. All this talk of the world superpower only feeds into this sense of the USA as an aloof different entity. I'm not sure what it will take to make them realise that working with others is better than going it alone. The damage Bush has pent up in the national debt he has largely amassed might change things, he needs other countries money.
Moving more locally, in the UK, it seems likely a third Labour term will happen, a result the other way might have put some pressure on Tony Blair, however it means the party will still have Bush on the Oval office reminding the Labour rebels about the war and making Tony continue to seem George's pet, though that might change in a second term. Some further analysis from BBC News
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(categories: 2004 uselection)
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an overview of the cost of the US election 2004
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hydra / subethaedit meets wikis with a nice interface perhaps
Recently I have found a new creative outlet to take my mind off the list of things going on in my life. From belt sanding the 300 sq foot floor of our bedroom, to the US election, product design pressures in work, the european constitution project I'm working on and the inevitable UK election and whether I can vote for Labour in the spring.
My new outlet is what is commonly called haiku, though often disparagingly. In fact mostly people write senryu. The key difference being haiku are about nature and include specific words to reflect season, the senryu are about human foibles.
Further references on haiku cover the life of Basho, one of the foremost masters of the art. There are a range of site covering the art haiku.com and Japanese site, the wikipedia definition. This is a lovely site, with some nice illustration, as is this one.
It is a thoughful pastime usually consisting of 3 lines and 17 syllables distributed in 5, 7 and 5. The intent is to capture or indicate a moment, a fleeting sensation usually of nature. My first efforts represent the lovely light from October.
dramatic light
veering sideways makes faces
glow as autumn leaves
More as I write them. The wonderful moleskine is the tool for writing haiku / senryu in, as they are perfect for writing on the train. Saves reading some tabloid over someone else's shoulder or feverishly typing on your powerbook.
I have been avidly following the US election, Guardian, BBC, Independent. I do want a Kerry victory, mainly as I do not believe that Bush is good for America and as the dominant power in the world, this is not a good situtation for the planet to be in. Many issues are going by the way side for this President who cares more for the lifestyle of the rich and the dominance of American commerce, than he does for American's role in the world. I'm thinking of Kyoto and drilling for oil in Alaska, amongst other issues. In terms of world politics, I cannot understand the intentions of a man who seems to just want to pick fights with the world and then move onto the next country, before he has done his duty on clearing up the first.
Today I found that George Soros in the Independent put it in a manner that made sense to me. This is an election between those with faith and those who are prepared to reason with the world. It is almost medieval in nuture, between the fervent belief that George W Bush instigates in his followers, versus the rationalists who are prepared to address the complexity of the world today. America is often depicted as two countries, all the recent maps have shown the coasts as Democrat and the interior as Republican, the flux is the mainly the upper mid-west, plus other costal areas. I only hope that those people who can see beyond the borders of the USA get out and vote. I want an America that is prepared to talk to others and engage with the issues that are essential for building a world for all of us.
You cannot impose democracy by cruise missile and helicopter gunship, you can only hope to engage and encourage the majority view in any country that working with others is better than going alone. Water shortages, poverty, Aids, global warming, peace in the Middle East, the former southern Soviet Union and countless other places will only come about through dialog, not military tough talk and absolute unquestionable belief.
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what really did hit the pentagon on September 11th ? If this is true what happened to the the American Airlines plane and passengers ?
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guide on good recent literature to read for budding and experienced IAs or just those interested in the field
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source of the MacOSX .dmg file for xpdf, which provides a free pdf to text tools
