Geo on a stick

This is (sadly)work related but Ive not seen any of the usual geobloggers mention this before.

I think this is kinda neat and I can think of many personal uses for it (and with my warped sense of civic duty, they mainly involve intelligence gathering to berate the local authorities)...if I do ever get one I shall be spearheading a campaign or two!!

Round and round and round we go...

40 solar orbits and counting.

I remain unconvinced by how we measure age. Calender and chronological age seem to have little relationship to biochemical and experiential age which is surely more significant than how many times you have orbited the sun?

Or perhaps I'm just getting old...

A Thankyou to Violet

Its been a while since my last post for a variety of reasons. One has been a personal reflective period occasioned by a trip home and some subsequent unearthing of the past.

Consider a woman who after a decade of trying conceives a child. Consider that same woman on discovering that what she wants most will kill her. Consider the woman who regardless of peril to self takes the child to term and nurses him as her own mortality closes in. Consider that she was of an age that her only child is now approaching and consider that her grandson is now as old as her own son when she died. Consider the injustice. Consider the sacrifice.

Thank you mother. Thank you on behalf of your grandchildren and your son who never got to know you except by deed. Those deeds say it all really. Consider.

Gods own language

There are times when the cupidity of humankind is beyond words. From belief in the holiness of images on toast, to the bastard philosophies of HandsomeLake and the Cargo Cults (and if you don’t know what these are I suggest you make quick with a search engine – which raises an interesting question. Are there religiously motivated search engines that will sanitize query results in order to espouse a particular moral view? Is this what Google did/does in China (elsewhere?). What is the consensus on pluralism and secularism? Answers on a postcard please).

Okay, I’m wandering off topic again. My point was the futility of much human endeavor – its simply wasted by the pious and self serving agendas purporting to be about the ONE TRUTH. Phah!! In the 21st century how can we succumb to such distortion and perversion of thought? Was the Enlightenment for nothing? Is scientific method so arcane and difficult that we need to resort to hide behind the skirts of tin gods and do millions die in ignorance for want of asking ‘Why?’. Surely a benevolent and caring God is hardly so egotistical (!) to demand unquestioning obedience (I seem to recall that that led to Nazism), or is the almighty so insecure that he (sexist so and so too!) needs to have mortals to bully?

Sorry. Dismount. Off hobby horse now, but I think what we need in this digital age is a new markup language:

The eXtensible Deity Markup Language (XDML).

Need a new saint? Mark it up in XDML. Have a particular sect your down on? Mark it up in XDML. What to swell the coffers of Jimmy Baker/Jimmy Swaggert? Mark it up brother.

XDML – your W3C compliant passport to heaven.

Cheap Shoes

One of the few things my late father ever instilled in me was the impression that the mark of a man is not just his clothes but additionally, his footwear and chronograph (sounds like a Traffic album title!). I would add to that music and literature but then I’m often perverse. What sent me down this route was sitting at Southampton airport in a vegetative state awaiting emplaning ( a nice adjective that if one that is somewhat slow paced when traveling FlyBE!!).

Anyway, back to the story and enough of the Ronnie Corbettesque diversions, I was struck by the preponderance of snazzily suited business men with incongruous footwear. Now, I’m not Gok Wang and I’m not in the fashion Gestapo, but for the love of decency is it really that hard to purchase a sensible, practical pair of shoes/boots that don’t contravene the UN Charter on Human Rights (specifically offensive articles of footwear leading to permanent visual impairment). Barratts remainder bin must get a lot of trade – nasty plastic faux Oxfords and Cambridges – or maybe that’s ‘in’ this season? Count me out though.

Contemporary jotter

A simple idea, simply executed still beats the pants of all that fancy Web 2.0 shenanigans! Its been a long time since I had a jotter, but its nice to see that the principle is as relevant today as in the pre-digitalozoic. Do one thing and do it well. Huzzah !!! My work scribbles will park here henceforth.

Old ways to rust

I’m a big fan of Shakey so it was with some anticipation that I got my mitts on his new CD although it wasn’t until this mornings 6am 3 mile dog walk that I managed to grab a listen. What struck me was that its essentially a fusion of his country-rock and grunge in one album – Old Ways meets Rust is a fair description I think…

DoS and Pants

The recent hiatus has been caused by a Denial of Service attack launched by my children – school half term has keft me 1. bankrupt 2. exhausted 3. little spare time for indolence!! Anyhow, ‘normal’ service can now resume and my first post is about…

pants

Actually, it was whilst walking the dog this morning in the cold crisp autumnal air (every so slightly scented with horse poo and ozone) and whilst reflecting on last nights television that my thoughts wondered to er, gussets. My wife has a penchant for cookery programmes and it was thinking about the bra challenged Nigella that the thought occurred to me that if over a quarter of all British women wear the wrong size bra, how many British men wear the wrong size pants? That got me to thinking about unpleasant events in the past whence I’ve suffered ‘gusset creep’ which is an unpleasant affliction that seems to be both painful and embarrassing at the same time and almost always happens at inopportune moments (such as being cramped in the middle row seat of an aircraft).

Anyhow, my puzzler for today, is what percentage of your male acquaintances are wearing appropriately sized pants (and I’m not even going to contemplate what proportion feel the need to go commando or wear their wife’s/girlfriends smalls)???

Tidbits

I came across this and thought it worth pointing to ...

RDT

A few people have asked me why I bother to blog? Hubris, conceit? Well, in part probably if I'm honest, but I think my major motivation/excuse is RDT:

Reflective Digital Therapy.

Forget all the new age mumbo-jumbo (a phrase taken direct from Dawkins and one I fully agree with), RDT is more in harmony with the digital zeitgeist and seems to offer a synaptic advantage in that contemporary western civilisation constantly requires us to reinvent and reflect on the offerings being bandied about in digital cornucopia. So...my answer to "why do you blog" is simple - it's therapy!

Shock horror!

Breaking an unwritten rule, I'm going to say something that’s work related! (Yes, I do have a job oddly enough - you can dispel images of me sitting with a litter of cats, chewing gum and wiping prono mags).

Anyhow - work. I've been struck lately by the mounting anti-formalisms that seem to be doing the round in the geo-related blogs (see here or here) . The simple reduction is that a RESTful experience is better than a heavyweight SOAP/WSDL one and I (for what its worth) tend to agree. If 80% can be accomplished by 20% of the effort, then the flipside seems to be 20% gain for 80% effort. Now, as the title of this blog attests, I'm naturally lazy and I cannot justify effort for efforts sake. So I guess I'm a RESTafarain rather than a WSDLite (and I’m sure H.G. Wells could have made much of that)..

Anyway, what started me down this road again was taking a look at WADL (Web Application Description Language) - something even the OGC in their collective wisdom are contemplating.... bears taking a shifty at.

An old hand

In the midst of a brown study on a flight recently, staring vacantly at the bald pate of the chap in front, my attention strayed and I started in shock at the realisation of an alien thing draped across the nearby window port. What was it, this ALIEN thing? Somebody else’s hand!! Take the time to study somebody’s hand in intimate detail and be surprised at just how familiar yet utterly foreign it is – the freckling, the hue, the shape the cuticles, the hair, the skin texture...all unsettlingly instinctively known and yet bizarrely …alien. Perhaps it was just the ennui of travel, but its an unsettling experience.

A serious moment.

Reflecting on the visibility of armed teenagers (nominally ‘military’ personnel but they all looked about 20yrs old), at Charles de Gaulle airport on my way home form a meeting in Luxembourg, I was forcefully struck by the notion that situations like Burma and the swagger of the young security guards was due in sum total to access to ordinance. I know it’s a hoary old chestnut, but surely a return to ‘civilised’ ways of armed conflict would be preferable – a sword is much more personal than an armalite and those engaged in conflict are immediately aware of the consequences (try ‘misfiring’ a broadsword).

Another thought whilst I cogitated (too much time awaiting transfer), was how come my car and every other appliance I own has a built in obsolescence , yet guns seem to be designed to last forever – that old WWII Luger under your dads bed (thankfully liberated from some scumbg nazi (but that’s another story)), is as deadly today as it was to the last jew/homosexual/gypsy/disabled person that smelt the cordite. What if they had a ‘best before’ date – I guarantee that wars would cease as everyone would claim their arms where out of date and so they couldn’t possibly engage in hostilities…(aka bottom of the fridge theory).

Crazy man!

I know that I’m partly to fault on this, but why is it necessary in foreign countries (European) to try an bamboozle innocent travellers? I’ve just been to Luxembourg and fine, clean and warm for the most part it was too, but I was completely thrown by their bus system. They seem to have two number ‘7’ buses that proceed in opposite directions but only for half the journey. Consequence is you can find yourself going in the opposite direction, backtracking and getting off at a stop to wait for the next number ‘7’ that actually goes where you expect. To add insult to injury, they also insist on having separate numbers for the bus queues, distinct from the bus numbers themselves, leaving me utterly perplexed (I only have pidgin French) as to why I needed to queue at a number ‘9’ stand for a number ‘7’ bus that went in the opposite direction to where I needed to be? There is one simple explanation of course – Luxembourg is where the European Commission has most of its functional and admin outposts. I hazard a guess that’s its not in Euro citizens interests to actually be signposted somewhere in a direct manner!!!

A Strange Reverence

One of the persistent mysteries in life is the belief that wisdom comes with age. Why should it be implicitly assumed that just because someone is old(er) that they have some intrinsic ‘worth store’ that gives them a privileged say? Surely this is reverse discrimination, discriminating against cleverness if favour of age? Just because someone is ‘mature’ doesn’t automatically make them clever – if they were stupid when they were young surely there likely as not to be stupid when they are old? Conversely , if they were clever when they were young they are likely to be clever when they are older? Age is no predictor of wisdom but I fear its deemed politically incorrect to say as much – buyt hey, whoever said I was PC?

The 0th Law of Geography

The first law of geography (i.e Toblers) states that things close to each other (spatially) are more alike than things that aren’t. I propose a Zeroth Law (to mirror Asimov’s laws for robotics) that states:

“the further things are apart the less we care about them”

It’s really the converse of Toblers but in today’s society more apt – cyberspace may shrink the opportunity costs but lets face it, west is west and the east is... well, a foreign country. Even in our own society its clear that we care less for geographically removed or remote denizens than we do for those we are forced to trip over as we leave our front doors – non-propinquity breeds disregard, which I think is a more socially responsible way of looking at geography rather than assuming ‘natural’ variegation caused by distance decay.

Whats in a name?

A word about the title of this blog. I’ve long had the view (in sympathy with social structuralism theories I believe), that good things come to those who already have, or at least have the means of self perpetuating. Ambition and self belief are allied to life chances and experience which is fundamentally tied to social opportunities – not surprising that doctors begat doctors; traffic wardens, traffic wardens (I’m being generous and assuming they are part of society!). The flipside of ambition and self belief is of course INDOLENCE and SELF DOUBT. A constant companion of mine from the ghetto. So, hence the title.

Entry the first

I can barely be assed to do this as self doubt about whether I should or indeed need/want a blog has seeped in again...
Of course pitted against the mealy mouthed rantings of some of my erstwhile peers with on the face of it, less to say than I do, what the hey!!!

PS typos will be a feature of this blog - spell checkers are for chumps and ninny pednats with too much time.