Execute Adulterers!

As succinct a response to all the anti-gay marriage horse shit as you are likely to get…

Pale Blue Dot

Posted for no other reason than it’s good to remind ourselves every now and then…

Cheers Mr Simpson for the link.

Camelot!

Cheers Mr Simpson!

As much as I love Obama…

… this speech by Dennis Kucinich at the Democratic Convention got my blood pumping.

Swansea

Staying in the worst hotel in Swansea (perhaps the world), working in the drug and crime centre of Swansea, and having a pleasant drink with an old friend in a very nice bit, next to a statue of Dylan Thomas. So it all works out.

I kind of like Swansea.

Hooray for the App store!

WordPress on the iPhone! Finally.

A Raymond K Hessel Moment

As I write more often than not these days, this blog seems to have atrophied a bit. It’s true; I’ve not been updating as much as I should; which is strange as I’ve hardly been lacking for things to write about of late.

But then, that’s my problem. I talk the talk about wanting to write more, to keep a blog going and to use it as an outlet for my creativity and thoughts, and to communicate better with my friends. But my urge to do it goes just as fast as life’s distractions get in the way (a sad tale which could be applied to far more lofty and important goals that blogging just as easily).

Talking to a friend last weekend though really made me think about this. I’m reading Stephen R Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People at the moment and it talks in great deal about the second habit; beginning with the end in mind.

Basically, what it’s talking about is having a map in front of you, having a clear idea about where you’re heading and it has occurred to me that that’s one of the things I’m lacking; a plan of where I’m heading that I can trust and have confidence in.

Anyway, going back to the conversation, what we ended up talking about was that sought feeling of clarity, of seeing it all laid out in front of you and knowing what needs to be done. And, as often happens, the conversation moved on to talking about Fight Club, and specifically, the Raymond K Hessel scene.

It’s a difficult and violent scene that I never really got first time I watched the film and it never sat well with me since, but it makes more sense now, and in my more morbid moments I long for that moment of horrifying clarity. Because as far as clearing away the shit to get to what really matters goes, quite frankly, I’m fucking terrible at it.

Where this is all leading to, in a very roundabout sort of way, is plugging a blog written by a friend of mine who was diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of weeks ago, the details of which I gained while I was having the aforementioned conversation down in Guildford. I’ll let her do the talking; her blog is infinitely more eloquent than mine, and is by turns riveting, witty and brutally frank. As I started reading I got a taste of what I’d been talking about. When I read the intimate thoughts of a friend who was going through her darkest hour and was still standing taller, cleverer, funnier, stronger, and with bigger balls than I’ll ever have, it all became clear, and all the shit, all my hangups and doubts, all of it, ceased to matter.

But if the trade-off for getting that moment of clarity is your friend going through what she’s been through, then that’s a fucking shitty bargain.

LL, you rock, seriously. In your bleakest times, you still piss on our chips.

Keep the blog coming. And get well soon.

x.

So long…

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating …and you finish off as an orgasm.”

RIP George Carlin.

My letter to Neil Burkett, CEO of Virgin Media.

Sent this this morning.

Dear Neil

I have been a loyal NTL/Virgin Media customer for the last five years and have, until now, had nothing but praise for the speed and value of service offered by your  company and its predecessor. I work in  IT and media and consider your broadband service to be a vital and valued service in my daily life.

  Thus it is with great sadness that I read your uninformed, disparaging and offensive criticisms of the concept of net neutrality and your intentions regarding Virgin Media and your future plans to “put any website or service that won’t pay Virgin a premium to reach its customers into the ‘Internet bus lane.’”

  Your attitude (“Net Neutrality is ‘bollocks’” – is this appropriate language for a prominent CEO?) and your demonstrated understanding of the principles that have made the Internet the economic powerhouse it has grown to be are very disappointing.

  Net Neutrality is, I concede, a somewhat conceptual controversy and I also concede that the current economic environment make the idea of premium content appealing. However, this argument is flawed; the Internet is valuable because of its breadth and its democratised base of information and this egalitarianism has led to the growth of internet phenomena such as YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia; cornerstones of the modern online experience.

  Conversely, I would argue that recent attempts to create a network which favour content from larger players at the expense of the little guy have created such dismal failures as the Compuserve and AOL systems of the mid 1990’s, the failure of WAP to engage the public’s interest at the beginning of this decade and the anaemic level of content many mobile providers provide for online surfing (compare the average level of online content use on mobile service provision with the massive take-up offered by the iPhone).

  People like the Internet because it is free, because their opportunities for exploration are vast and they can do what they want in a way that is hard to compare with any other electronic medium that preceded it.

  Virgin Media has a reputation as an innovator and pioneer in the broadband service it offers its UK customers and your exclusive access to the cable system means you have much more to offer. You can use this potential you have to offer your customers the service we want and keep us happy, or you can squander our trust in order to make a few short-term content deals. The choice is yours but I urge you, let history be your guide.

  I wish you well.

  Regards

Toby Jones.  

ITV kills episode of ‘Pushing Daisies’

It’s this kind of shit that is killing ITV; they’re too f***ing dumb to see it. Bear in mind this is after they got 5.7 million viewers for the first episode and these days ITV are lucky if they get 5.7 viewers.

Oh well, that’ll be more customers for BitTorrent then.