Over the falls

Royalty

2011-07-05T09:19:00.002+10:00

I awake in the quiet of the morning, reclining on my bed, made by the finest mattress-makers in all the land, filled with natural fibres and customised support structures, designed to ensure that I awake from each night's sleep revitalised and refreshed. I rise into the sunshine amid the sounds of the parrots frolicking in the garden, and don fine robes, crafted far off in the orient. I dress for comfort and warmth, and that which I seek I find instantly in my wardrobe, filled with many, many such clothes for all occasions.

As I descend the staircase, I feel that perhaps I should like a warm, invigorating beverage to ease the chill on this winter morning.

"As you wish, my Liege" - A beautiful white clean china cup, with intricate floral designs, and an ingenious machine that heats water almost instantly sparks into life with a gentle boiling hush. While I wait the idle minute or so, I gaze out at the tropical landscape, quietly encompassing the view, a dense majesty so rich and vivid, and yet, one that this King often fails to appreciate. I reach into a nearby drawer, and produce a clean shiny, silver teaspoon. In a jar nearby I have a compound, composed by the most brilliant food scientists, that, when mixed with water, reconstitutes the finest Arabica coffee from Equatorial Guinea - the aromas and deep robust hues appear like magic, as the boiling water is poured into the cup.

While the flavours of the pure drink are intense, lively and bold, I am not satisfied. Indeed, I should like this beverage to be sweeter. In another jar, just nearby, I have the distilled granules of a compound grown in the northern lands, the sugar cane. This grass is grown to a height of around 12 feet, before workers harvest and slash it, and then each individual strand of cane is crushed, woven and pressed, until a thick molasses is formed. This brown molasses is then refined through a boiling process, seven times, until a pure white crystal is produced, after extensive drying. It is this substance, this white powder fit for a king, that I choose to sweeten my beverage with. I add two spoons of the powder into the cup and stir. The clinking of my spoon is the only sound in the still morning.

And now, while sweet, this drink still does not please me sufficiently well. For it to be fit for me to drink this winter morning, it requires further modification. What I wish, is for a maternal cow who has given birth to a calf to be taken from the pastures and to have milk suckled from her teat. This milk should then be boiled and cooled. Then, when it has been boiled and cooled once more, it shall be carried on the roads of the land, hundreds of miles, until it is brought to me. This is perhaps an odd request, but it is what I desire.

Fortunately, being a King, precisely this liquid, white and cold, is stored right beside me, in a complex cupboard, designed by the finest engineers so that the temperature inside it is maintained at that of a freezing winter morning.

I pour this white milk into my cup. It swirls brilliantly, thermal currents producing a spectacular display of diffusion whorls. I stir them away impatiently with my spoon.

Bearing my Royal mug, I adjourn to the front deck, to sit in the winter sunshine, as it warms the land. As I sit, regally on the deck, high above the other houses and the ocean below, I am reminded of those fresh moments of my youth, those times when the winter sunshine seemed the only comfort that I received.

Still moments, where alone, and far from home, when that warming ray of sun on the back of my neck was like magic in the cold mornings, my cheeks still flushed from the cold, my clothes ragged and unkempt. Full of promise and discovery, a stranger to change, I would find those quiet moments in the morning, and I would feel amazed that I could be there, amazed that the world had a mechanism that I could maybe one day comprehend and be part of.

The sweep of nostalgia covers me with a rich tapestry of memories and moments, and the fleeting, desperate longing comes with it - for that time, when I was not a king, and was merely a rough and tumble young knave. I let it pass as I finish my coffee.

The Royal iPhone rings.

The Man who lived in the Sea

2011-05-12T07:27:00.001+10:00

At the edge of the world, where the sand meets up against the crystal cylinders of the rolling blue windswept ocean lived a simple and humble man, who had forsaken the land and his family. He stayed, for the most part, drifting around in the water, floating with the waves, riding the swollen anticipation that stemmed from the storms far out to sea on a hand made board. Fed up with the complications of the land, of the stupid human machinations of society, of people, and responsibility, he had awoken one morning with the seed of an idea.

And over time, although that seed was poised to blossom into a crazy proposition, he nurtured it, referred to it in quiet moments standing at the bus stop. He held it close to him, and it was never far from his thoughts.

This is how to grow oneself an idea - one holds it in the top of mind, and when pressured or sad, one recalls it. Soon, the idea will start to bud. Far from being fully-formed, an idea in the process of unfolding doesn't need to be held in the mind - it will reappear spontaneously as it grows, or when its host would benefit from its presence. Soon, the idea will begin to fully bloom, and if it is carefully regarded, and welcomed by its owner, it will take root, and the host will be driven to share it, to act on it, and to publish it far and wide to others. This is where an idea begins its powerful transformation into being, and this is how the world is made.

The seed of the idea that was planted into the humble man was to live in the sea. To forgo the suit, and the tie, and the meetings. Always meetings. To throw off his responsibilities with callous disregard, and to move from the land to the water, with a view never to return. There were problems with this zygotic notion, he would agree with himself, nodding. For instance, there were bound to be some people who would feel upset by his departure from the walking people. There was likely a great deal of busywork that would remain uncompleted, task items unchecked, questions asked. There were other things, more physical things, that would hinder his ability to live in his new aqueous abode.

And yet, despite it all, his idea began to grow, like a sand flower, clung to the yellow dunes, with dogged persistence, in such a fashion that made one suspect that there was a powerful subterranean reservoir that provided the flower with nutrients in this harsh sandy windswept world. And there was - it was love.

The humble man was in love with the sea. She danced for him, and whispered with crashing waves, the sounds of freedom into his ears. He could hear her call from far away, and was drawn to her, to stand with his feet buried in her sandy shores, and to gaze longingly at the swollen, bursting hollow lines of the waves. Sometimes the wind would blow from over the shore, and her delicate lines would be clearly accentuated, with trails of blown water streaming from the tops of her peaks, and he loved her. He wanted her most of all, more than the land-things. His desire grew. More and more flowers appeared on the bud of his idea, and soon, she was the only thing in his mind.

And then one day, the dense herbaceous entanglement of the idea could not contain itself within him any longer. He pressed the button on the bus marked "Stop" and pressed his way through the commuters, without saying "Excuse Me", and he kicked off his shoes as he walked through the automatic door. He walked through the tourist lines, through the market of people setting up their goods, removing his tie. He threw his jacket into the open parkland where children were playing with a football. He shed his suit pants, and pausing only to grab his board from the racks, slipped away into her open arms, as his idea burst forth into being.

And that is where you can find him to this day, floating with his one true love, nestled among the hollows of her waves, floating joyously among the white foam. Sometimes there are difficult moments, turbulent times where she will not talk, and only scream, trying to storm away from him, and all he can do his cling to his board and wait for her to calm down, and other times she is still and sad, and he must paddle hard to stay with her, to work with slight, delicate waves.

And together they are their own kinds of happy - one with the immense fullness of the natural world, and one with delight and accomplishment at the power of change.

Introducing Musichord

2011-01-07T12:15:00.004+11:00

I've always fancied myself as a writer for Rolling Stone. Living a wild reckless, rock n' roll lifestyle, touring around with no fixed address, being all edgy and drug addled and fuck-you establishment... Being one of those guys who can't speak, interviewing people who can't talk for the benefit of those who can't read...

...Overall, It seems I have (fortunately) chosen a somewhat different path, but part of that reckless dream lives on in my new blog, Musichord.

Along with an old friend, Charles, I'll be posting my thoughts on new music I like.

Yeah, as a couple of aging hipsters, it's tempting to hate everything that the kids come out with these days. But it turns out there's a lot to like out there. And if you're looking for something new to listen to, or just for that voyeuristic pleasure that comes from skipping through somebody else's iPod, you can head over to our new website - You can also get us on Facebook, and Twitter, too.

Rock on. :)

So this is the New Year...

2011-01-02T13:00:00.001+11:00

We spent New Years in time honored family tradition, on the beach under a glorious clear sky, with the Western Outer Orion Arm of the Milky Way luminous and scattered above the warm summer waves.

This year, I've decided to focus on production rather than on consumption. If that sounds a bit odd, well, perhaps it is.

It seems to me that in this coming decade, the massive increase in information availability, brought to me through the internet - through Facebook, and Twitter, and mainly through a never ending supply of smart, insightful and amusing humans to provide me with content, results in me feeling obligated to consume it all.

That I should read each heartfelt status update, and follow each interesting link. I should upvote salient points of view, demote and chastise those less pleasant.

I should "Like" things I read,

(Except when the tone of the status update indicates that "liking" would be inappropriate:

"Bob was abused as a child - 12 people like this")

I should be abreast of the latest memes and Internet jokes, be able to identify a RickRoll or a Bachelor Frog at twenty paces. I should re-tweet this to my followers. I should leave a pingback on relevant posts. I should only "mark as read" when I have actually 'read'. I should not unsubscribe, or uninstall. I should poke those who poke me. I should help my neighbor in Farmville. I should add to favorites. I should rate this content 5 stars. I wont have the guts to set this as my status message for the day. I should leave a review. I should ignore this purchase for the purposes of recommendations. I should re-join today at heavily discounted rates. Chris is new, so I should suggest people who Chris knows...

LOOK INTERNET, ENOUGH, OK?

Given some time to reflect, in all seriousness, all this stuff requires me to take in an inordinate amount of information. My default position in the information economy has become to spend far too much time trying to passively consume it all.

As much as I love the people and the intentions behind it, this year I'm going to stop consuming.

Instead, I'll focus more on my family , my work , my blog, and the endeavours that I've already undertaken, that are, truth be told, suffering through my information consumption addiction. Focus more on what I can produce, than what I can consume.

So, my gift to you for the coming year, is this:

Go ahead and ignore me.

Don't read my status updates, or my tweets. Don't feel you have to reply to my silly email, or leave comments on my ramblings.

I won't mind. It doesn't sound like much, I know, but maybe I can give you back a single instant of time to produce something worthwhile - a moment with your kids, or some creative pursuit- leaving the office a minute earlier, not missing the train, checking an item off the task-list.

In the end, it's our contributions that define us. Our actions, not the amount of background research we did.

This year, I want to do more, and I think the way to achieve it will be to focus on the doing, rather than the related information and discussion.

Happy New Year!

(if you like this post, please tell ten friends about it, via seven different social networks, set this as your status, print it out and stick it to your car. Bill Gates is counting them, and 1 dollar from every post will go to cure starving elephants from child abuse.)

Good Morning, Cockroach!

2010-12-20T07:04:00.004+11:00

The cockroach, like all creatures, is a miracle of evolution and adaptation. It's unique segmented body design, and it's hardiness and durability are legendary among popular parlance. It can survive in the most trying circumstances, subsist on almost nothing and thrive on on the most meagre fare.

But there is one thing that it hasn't yet adapted to - a perfectly flat, even surface. Such a thing has not existed for the vast majority of the cockroaches millions of ancestors, and the modern day cockroach is now frequently found adventuring across such surfaces, in the corners of bathrooms and under microwave ovens all over the world.

The problem with flat, even surfaces only becomes apparent to the cockroach when it is unfortunate enough to capsize, and land on it's back. Its method for righting itself is to wave it's legs and antennae wildly, in an effort to grab a hold of the leaf litter, sticks or grass of its habitat, and using the unevenness of the ground, get enough purchase to end up with the sky above it once more, ready to begin further scurrying.

In the absence of such things, as you are unlikely to find on the smooth porcelain of a bathroom floor, all this flailing fails to correct the problem. Unless it can find the edge of the toilet, or a stray piece of paper, or a drain, the cockroach will lie there, legs thrashing, until eventually it dies. The unnatural modern environment, as we have built it, can kill the hardiest of creatures, in the most benign way.

As I stare down at the final valiant, yet ultimately useless throes of a member of this species, shaving my face, and constantly watching the clock on my way to my 9AM meeting, it dawns on me that perhaps it's possible that our modern environment affects us in similar ways. What has humanity evolved to expect, that for whatever reason, is no longer there?

Would we as a species be stupid enough to create such a thing? One would assume that for humans, the things we hold dear and important to our survival would be at the center of any system that emerged from our clever behaviour. I mean, it's not like cockroaches got together and invented linoleum tiles. That would be an ironic end, indeed.

Grabbing a tissue, I scoop the corpse of the recently deceased insect, and, perhaps a little ceremoniously, flush him/her down the toilet.

Time to get to work.

Not The Story

2010-11-24T21:15:00.001+11:00

So, I’m Momo.

What?

Why’s it say “So, I’m Momo?”

What? What are you doing Dad?

(laughs)

Dad, just go back, back, back back.

Delete, Delete – Dad! – You’re not meant to be writing this, Dad.

Dad!

Dad!!

Back –uh – Do back!

(frowns)

(looks sad, but says nothing)

Why don’t you just delete all that?

And THEN we can do the story – if you delete it all.

Make all the letters go away!

Why not Dad? You’re just doing random stuff. This isn’t the story.

Pearly

2010-09-26T23:42:00.002+10:00

I found myself, standing in the entrance to a massive building, being guided by an unknown force that was far too big for me to resist or even to question. As we herded into the alcove, I could see up ahead, an ascending escalator with people riding smoothly up one side, and down the other. Suspended in mid air above the escalator, were 10 different coloured gaseous squares, like a series of lasers swirling through a mist, all at head height. I watched as people boarded the escalator, and rose up, their heads each passing through these strange coloured zones.

Semi-reluctantly, I boarded the escalator, aware of the endless jostling queue behind and in front of me. Easing my way up to the first zone, I felt it pass smoothly over my face. It felt strange, though not unpleasant - like that fuzziness that you feel when you wake too early in the morning. I moved out of the zone, leaving the feeling behind. As I continued the ride up to the top, passing through each of the different coloured zones, I could see out over the room below. It was a massive sprawling metropolis, like a giant theme park. People were idly walking, chatting, riding on thrilling roller coasters, swimming in a beautiful azure lagoon.

I arrived at the top of the escalator, and complicity turned to my right, to proceed towards the descending escalator, following the footprints of the person in front of me. There was perhaps some kind of a way to exit without descending, maybe some kind of administration area at the top, but my feet obediently followed the worn path, and I began my descent, heading through the remaining 5 coloured zones. Again I felt the warm, fuzzy feeling manipulating my brain, removing all the fear, and making life easier.

As I arrived at the bottom, I walked into a kind of exposition, where all the latest technology was being given to those who were interested. There were fantastic cell phones, 4-Dimensional televisions, computer tablets, all being handed out to anybody who wanted them. I ambled past a number of stalls, taking it all in.

I continued, dazed, along the boardwalk, breathing the rich smells of the delightful food that was being prepared and handed out to eager hungry folk of all ages.

As I walked on, I came to the water, where an enormous cannon was firing a raft filled with people skimming across the water, screaming with delight. All around me there were people content with their lives, enjoying their social media, their freedom,and their food. Across the lake I could see beautiful living quarters facing the water. Lights were starting to wink on as the twilight approached.

I had a near overwhelming impulse to join - to relax and engage in the frivolity. This was plain, easy living, fun loving, stress free existence. I had nothing to fear. I had no stress, nothing to even bother myself thinking about. There was no value to be gained in thinking, for there was nothing to be obtained from it. I had been braincleansed, and released into a free-range human enclosure, specifically designed by caring and compassionate beings to cater to my primate species' every desire.

I knew that this was not the kind of thing that would result in suffering. There was no planned uprising against the humans. We would not be eaten by some terrifying monster, or made into a battery of energy producing cells. We would not be maimed, or harmed for sport. The beings that had built this world for us were benevolent, kind and immensely powerful.

I was astounded. Imagine - never having to work again. Never having to struggle for anything, or suffer. No need for any kind of hunger or want. Never longing for something I could not have. Everything I could ever possibly desire was here. I could stay. I could make myself part of a nice social circle, have a family, settle down, and never concern myself with anything unpleasant or arduous again.

So why did it feel so unsatisfying? What was this fleeting feeling of dread, this sudden lack of potency? I had no need for any kind of power, my rational brain was suggesting to me. Why did it matter? There is no point in being powerful. You have all you will ever want. I knew this to be true. And yet, I remained unsure, aloof.

Suddenly, a powerful and starkly terrifying thought shook me, lurching from my old mind, through my stomach to the forefront of my brain.

This is it, I thought. Welcome to Heaven.

High Noon in Port Moresby

2010-08-20T15:36:00.002+10:00

Squatting down on the cement pathway, huddled amidst the short shadows of the passers-by, is a small child. As people stir past him, ambling on their daily chores, he watches them pass intently.

Periodically, he stiffens his back, puffs out his chest, and yells.

“MANSPRAY!”

The locals ignore him easily, continuing their amiable conversations as they proceed. Most are wearing bilims around their heads or shoulders. A woman carries a small baby nestled in her woven string bag – others are full of lime pots, food and cigarettes.

The sidewalk is a deep rusty orange, the colour of the Beetelnut tainted streams of spit that spurt unexpectedly from the mouths of those who crowd into it. The oppressive humidity seems to lift a little in the middle of the day, to be replaced by the blazing heat of the sun.

“MANSPRAY!”

I have always had trouble intentionally ignoring people. I have a kind of universal respect for every human, which seems to include at a minimum that I will genuinely listen to anybody when they talk to me. This means that, throughout my life, I have had a lot of very boring conversations about life insurance, salvation and various worthy charities. I am, as the less scrupulous and hardened salesman can attest, an “Easy Mark”.

Each time I am accosted in this manner, I am always slightly offended at the salesman for taking advantage of me. Surely, I think, if everyone has the same sense of respect for each other, we wouldn’t exploit such a notion for personal gain? That would be unfair…

I look down at his brown face. His big dark eyes, bulging slightly. His scruff of curly hair is tightly cropped, and his cheeks are slight, above full red lips. As soon as his eyes meet mine, He knows me.

Our engagement is silent, and flits by in a microsecond, yet worlds of information pass quickly between us.

He can sense my sickly patronising sympathy, which I am desperately trying to suppress. My compassion and sense of dignity that I feel should be afforded to all people, regardless of social or economic background. He can tell that, on some level, I am afraid of him. Afraid. A grown man of thirty-five is afraid of an eight year old? And yet, he is correct. In addition to a general feeling of not being safe, I am fearful of his culture – of his status. In some way his presence offends my worldview. “This isn’t right”, I say through my eyes. My son is eight. He concerns himself primarily with Nerf guns and Nintendo and school. This boy is all wrong. He should be learning and playing, and enjoying all of what it means to be eight years old, not barefoot, yelling at strangers in a dirty street.

He knows that I am not of this place. That I am here fleetingly, on some whitepela business deal, that I am uncomfortable and awkward.

I can see that he is not enjoying this, yet he does not dream of being elsewhere. I know that he is hawking these streets at the behest of some other entrepreneurial adult, probably somewhere nearby. I know that he is hardened, pushed well beyond things that are expected of such a young child in other cultures. That he has seen and experienced things that my sheltered upbringing and ever so slightly wayward youth never forced upon me. I know a sense of unfounded remorse, of inherited shame.

And I know that he knows that in this instance, he has found himself an easy mark.

I look away, and attempt to resume my passage along the sidewalk as if nothing has happened. I adjust the laptop bag I am carrying on my shoulder. The average wage earner here would have to work for about three years to afford the contents of my laptop bag. It’s like carrying a fucking house in the boot of your car.

“HEY MISTER – YOU BUY MANSPRAY”

I stop, and look back at him. He hurriedly waves me toward him. Slowly, I turn and comply.
In his hands, he holds some cheap horrid looking perfume in a glass bottle, that proudly proclaims itself to be “Drakkar Noir”

“Manspray, huh?” I ask. He looks at me again. This time, all business.

“YOU BUY MANSPRAY – TWENTY KINA”

I hand him the cash. He offers me the bottle.

Meta Mutter

2010-07-04T10:55:00.003+10:00

The late morning sun lights up the slats of the wooden blinds, casting striped shadows across the floor of the room. The winter solstice just passed, and the wind behind the pane of glass shuffles the trees slightly, as if trying to find a more comfortable position to settle down in for the coming day.

Seated cross legged on the bed, typing these words into a computer, is Gordon Taylor. He yawns, stretches his toes and removes the blue hood from his head. What kind of a story is he planning to tell you? In truth, he doesn't know himself. He is inspired to begin writing only because he loves the way words sound when they are describing things, the way they can conjure a picture of reality using the abstract constructions of letters and phrases. In truth, such a notion is not the best reason to begin to write. The best reason to write is to share a tale, to amaze, affront, astound and challenge the reader (that's you). Gordon would dearly like to be able to construct such a tale. He has made several attempts, but each effort seems thwarted for various reasons.

The main reason that Gordon likes to attribute these failures to, is time. "Who has time to do such things", he wonders aloud. To his left, his wife Alison stirs, mutters an incomprehensible answer, and rolls over - trying to find a more comfortable position to settle down in.

Time, or the linear progression of events that we perceive it as, is a wonderful scapegoat. And yet, there are the same number of hours in a day as ever we started counting them. Any other person who ever achieved anything did it within the same structure of days, weeks, months, years. No, Gordon knows that his assertion, while comforting, is not correct. If you are inspired to tell a tale, or to write some music, to pursue some creative endeavour for which you have a flair, or even a fondness for, what you need is not more time, it is more passion. It is the ability to commit that is the real reason for manifesting anything into the world.

And so now, an inspiration to begin writing something beautiful has turned, for Gordon into an effort in self-chastising. He is not happy about this. Like many humans, Gordon does not appreciate the lens of reality being directly applied to his motivations, even by himself. He can feel a sense of resolve building within him - there are facets of his life that he knows need more commitment, and greater passion, if they are to be successful. There are, as he likes to say several "things he has been kidding himself about" that simply will not proceed unless substantial, concerted, wholehearted focus is given to them.

There are no shortcuts to be taken. There is no amount of re-scheduling, or time-blaming, or productivity hacks that will magically reduce the effort required. No, what he needs to do, is to convert this internal sense of resolve into a commitment. And then work on those commitments unfailingly and without relent, until they are real enough to be described in a story such as this.

That's all very well, thinks Gordon to himself, as he amends the title of this story.

But then he thinks that it might be time for breakfast.

Dark Galaxy

2010-06-30T11:35:00.003+10:00

Dark Galaxy was a web based strategy game that in early 2002 became a huge time sink at the software company I was working for. I can't actually remember the point of it, or how the whole thing worked. But while shuffling through some old files, I stumbled upon this story that I had written about it.

Tosh re-lit the lantern as the rest of the workers filed into the small portable kitchen.

“Another turn’s work completed”

“Yeah- I reckon that harvest should keep ‘em going for a while”

Tosh was tired. Tired of farming. The genetically enhanced super food crops would soon be ready for more harvesting in another turn – then what? Off they’d go again… More harvesting, more carrying, more trudging through dirt. The food would be loaded onto the giant robocarrier that would take it off to the holding cache. I hope those folk in the colony appreciate what we do for them, Tosh thought, distastefully.

The lantern cast eerie shadows on the scraggly beards of the workers as they took off their boots and began chatting amiably. Tosh was tired of their stories, their same old friendly nature- the predictability of their lives. They were farmers - happy with their lot.

His mind wandered back to the tales Sat had told him – the stories of the planet that orbited a giant bright space light. On that planet, Sat said – half of the time the planet was bathed in an enormous bright light – that lit up everything as far as you could see like an enormous lantern. Then, as the planet turned, darkness enveloped the land. Tosh was used to the darkness. Everyone here was. It was the idea of something different that made Sat’s story sound so appealing. Tosh stared at the lantern, burning a giant pink blob into the back of his eyes.

“Hey – Grub’s up!”

Tosh turned towards the voice, blinking. The pink blob stayed obstinately present as his eyes opened and closed.

“Wha?”

The tall farmer with a pink blob for a head held out a tin plate of food towards Tosh.

“Oh – uh, thanks” He took the plate and began to eat.

With a sputtering noise, the fusion lantern hanging from the ceiling blacked out.

Laughing and muted cheers from the farmers as they resumed their feeding.

“Really Tosh – I don’t know why you bother with that stupid thing – It hurts my eyes.”

Another voice agreed – “Much better in the darkness – that’s the way we was born”

“Not Tosh – his Mother was a Fusion Reactor!”

More laughter.

Tosh silently crept to his hammock hanging at the back of the room, and curled up for sleep – more determined than ever before to find something different.

The Impulse woke him at the beginning of the turn, sent him-half asleep into the field, where the newly regenerated foodcrops waved in the breeze, waiting to be harvested again. Autonomously, he began picking pods from a nearby grove of tall daschun plants. Slowly coming to his senses, he realized all the men nearby were doing the same thing.

Not today, he thought. I can’t do this again. Or could he? It seemed so natural- so easy to use the Impulse, to work within the boundaries… A moment of brief internal struggle showed on his face, as he forced his feet to walk further afield.

“Hie – Tosh! Where you going?”

“There’s a good patch just over here – I saw it yesterday”

Diving through the plants, Tosh heard the sounds of the farmers fading away as he forced his way through the plants. He forced himself to walk away, leaving the field for a dense plain of scrubby, dusty earth, that seemed to go on forever. As he walked, he contemplated the difference between the light and the dark, and pondered his destination.

His first thought was to get back to the colony, but when he tried to remember which way he had come when they set out to build the farm, he found he could not.

That whole six turn process had all been done under the Impulse, and was a hazy blur of subconscious memories, like cloudy dreams. In fact, life in the colony seemed a dream. Maybe it didn’t even exist. Ah, but Sat did. Those tales were real, and so must she be. Tosh ached to see her again. How long had it been? Many, Many Turns. He wondered what she was doing now… Was she even on the same planet as him? Sat had spent a great of turns in orbit, after building the Colian Habitat, the first of the four habitat rings. Tosh looked up at the sky. Over the horizon, he could just make out the glow of the four generators that powered a habitat ring. He imagined her there, looking out one of the huge bay windows so the planet filled her view. Maybe, she’d be thinking about me. The frivolity of such a notion made Tosh shake his head. How far had he been walking? He turned. The farm was no longer in view. All around him, nothing but empty dry plain.

One Day by the Sea

2010-04-18T20:56:00.010+10:00

This post is in honour of my father's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I couldn't be there in person this year, but I was there in spirit. And as one of those solemn and awkward blonde kids, I hope this story will give you some insight into how much that day meant to me, as well as to you both.

Herb and Ailsa swam towards their summer cove, for what seemed to Herb like the thousandth time. The morning sky was a pale grey as Herb idly broached the surface, taking a quick breath before returning to his spouse.

"I still think we should have stayed home. The water isn't any warmer here."

"Yes, Dear", Ailsa said, almost automatically.

"And you know, Hank was going to take us out to visit that new wreck he found. I wanted to see that..."

"I know Dear. It will still be there when we return, I'm sure"

Herb opened his beak as if he was about to speak, and then thought the better of it. They swam on together in silence.

The summer cove had been a longstanding part of Ailsa's family tradition, and not even Herb's staunch grumpiness could sour the anticipation she felt as they arrived in sight of the brown rocks that marked the headland. The annual trip back to the cove was always a touchstone for Ailsa. Each sandy path through the rocks brought with her a childhood memory - her sisters bravely daring each other into difficult and more dangerous underwater caves, her father calling her home as the day faded. Strange and delicious new foods. Late nights with the pod, laughing in the moonlight. But most of all, the cove brought a kind of security for her. No matter what Herb's position was, she would be here. And Herb knew that as well as anyone. With an extra spring, she leapt high out of the water, taking the time to survey the familiar yellow cliffs and scraggy casurina trees that clung to the windswept sides of the cove.

The tide was particuarly high, as it always was this time of year, and as Herb sluggishly chased a school of Tailor off towards the deeper waters, Ailsa ventured a little further into the cove, where the swell was starting to break. Kicking her tail, she nestled perfectly into the curl of the wave, and felt the warm sun on her dorsal fin as the wave propelled her forwards, faster, and faster, into a salty white foam. Again she leapt from the water with excitement, with scant regard for her age, like a dolphin 30 years younger. It was on this brief flight that she noticed the crowd out on the beach. It was strange to see so many humans crowded onto the lonely beach of the cove. And what was even stranger, was that they were all so quiet. It was a golden sunny day, and save for a few fluffy cumulus clouds, the sky was the deep blue of late summer. Perhaps it was just the memories of her reckless youth, but Ailsa found herself intrigued. She slowly swam closer, away from the breaking waves, up one of those sandy paths between the rocks. Carefully rising above the surface, she could here the speaking tones of a single human. The noises they made were so strange...

As she rose, Ailsa could see the humans had arranged themselves into a strange formation - a male and female were touching their bony flippers together in the centre of the congregation. Alongside the female were more females, clutching flowers, and three blonde haired children stood beside the male, looking solemn and awkward. A gaggle of spectators watched enthusiastically. A single human addressed the male and female in the center:

"...Do you Ian, take Catherine to be your Lawful Wedded Wife? To have and to hold, in sickness and in health?..."

There was more muttering and strange staccato sounds from the humans. Surely, Ailsa thought, this was some kind of courtship ritual. A human bonding. Ailsa's thoughts went immediately to the day that she and Herb were bonded before the pod. Surely, to a human, that would look just as curious as this? Ailsa turned, and let out the familiar clicking sound to alert Herb that she was nearby. A click returned through the water:

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm still coming. There's plenty of food here."

Ailsa again poked her head above the water. There was more talking, and then the Male grasped the Female between his flippers, and pressed his flat beak up against the beak of his new spouse...

The thunderous applause, and cheering noises that immediately followed caused Ailsa to shoot below the surface, and swim against the waves back to the safety of deeper water. In her haste, she didn't notice Herb, returning with a beakfull of Tailor.

"Hey! What's the rush?" Herb looked concerned at her flighty demeanour, as she collided with his side.

"Oh, it was... Nothing..." Ailsa had to settle from the unexpected noise, she felt dizzy from overbreathing.

"Well, there's lots of great food to be had out there. I uh, caught you some. And you know what, I think maybe the water is a little warmer. I haven't felt this speedy in months!"

Ailsa turned to look at her spouse of 25 years. Fish was hanging out of his beak. He had that same hangdog expression that he was wearing when Ailsa had first met him, same furrowed brow. On the spur of the moment, she swam alongside him, and clasped his torso with her flippers. She pressed her beak up against his beak.

"My darling", she said warmly, "Happy Anniversary"

"Happy wha? Get off me, have you lost your mind? Hey!" Herb struggled against the unfamiliar embrace.

By the time he had struggled free, his Wife had snatched the catch from his mouth and he found himself staring as she flipped her sassy tail to disappear into the deeper waters of the cove.

Grinning, he swam after her.

Hey, look at me, I'm a Business Jerk.

2010-03-18T00:03:00.000+11:00

In a crowded hotel room, hastily assembled, the desks arranged in a U shape. Business people are seated sedately, all wearing collared shirts, some with ties, listening to a discussion about the grant funding capacity of the Australan Government in Papua New Guinea, and the benefits to the state of Queensland. Lame jokes elicit predictable polite courtesy laughter.

The Queensland Treasurer, a young politician looks bored and fidgets idly with his pen. It's not surprising. The topic bores us all, and I am forced to write down what I see in order to give the appearance that I am taking notes. I look up and nod periodically, as if to say "Yes, that's a good point" or occasionally with a furrowed brow - "I don't know about that..." Nobody notices. Secretly, everyone's mind is wandering. The Asian gentleman to my right is fighting sleep- his eyelids conspiring against his desire to be seen to do the right thing in this artificial social envionment.

"...This is an exciting time..." says the speaker. Oh no it's not. The blackberry wielding, hurried young businessman with the striped shirt rubs his eyes fiercely, and adjusts his position again on the uncomfortably hard hotel chair.

A question from a concerned participant changes the tone of the room for a brief moment, before the dull monotonous warble of the original speaker resumes. In a way, his voice is welcome, like a familiar blanket, returning the participants to their somnambulistic business daydream.

In my mind, I stand and announce loudly to the room:
"My God, this is Boring! I'm leaving. Enjoy your business jerk meeting, suckers!"
The speaker stops, aghast. The smirks hidden behind expressions of mock surprise turned my way all reveal the same inner thought - "Yes!"

The room errupts into hubbub, as everyone has an opinion to express at once. I can see Tammy, the meeting organizer frowning harshly at me. I slam the door as I gleefully depart to the freedom of my independent life.

...The Treasurer interrupts my fantasy. It's clear he's considering the same idea. Instead, he tells a joke, and asks a direct question in an effort to curtail the rambling. The rambling answer that's returned takes several additional minutes from our lives. Again, the Treasurer interrupts. This time to thank the speaker and politely insist that the meeting is over.

Smiling and nodding, I file out of the room into the bright lobby, adjusting my tie.

Buzz - I wonder why it does

2010-02-12T12:15:00.000+11:00

Apparently web based social services need to be named after animal noises. We have Twitter and now Buzz, so that's the birds and the bees covered. Hopefully Microsoft or Yahoo can get in on the act with something with a bit more grunt - Oink! Or "Moo" perhaps...

Seriously though, a few things struck me about Buzz that I wanted to share.

Google has, via gmail, been collecting a lot of my social capital. It knows who I talk to most, and presumably at least semantically, what I talk about with whom. In the back of my mind, I was vaguely aware that this was going on, but Google's "don't be evil" mantra kind of reassured me that this data wouldn't be exploited. With the launch of Buzz, it becomes apparent precisely the scope and scale of this profile mining excerise that Gmail has been. As a heavy Gmail user, buzz came pre-configured with all my friends, and had 75 interesting posts from them, at launch.

Compare this with Google Wave, which launched with an empty canvas. My Wave inbox still has 10 "waves" in it, all of which say roughly the same sort of thing: "wahoo! I'm on a Google wave..."

So is Buzz going to replace Facebook for me? - I hate to say it, but there's a real chance that it will. I live in Gmail, and only rarely visit facebook - mainly posting through my Twitter account. How is this going to affect workplaces? Will they begin limiting access to gmail, just as many today block Facebook? Will there be a Buzz for your Domain" feature, akin to Yammer for Google Apps? How would such a product fit in with the compliance and regulation governance rules around retention and records management?

As usual, more questions than answers. But I think this is really the most game changing thing I've seen from Google since Gmail itself. Crazy interesting times. Baa!

Gord's Ukulele Ringtone for the iPhone

2009-08-26T16:27:00.005+10:00

Late last night I picked up my Ukulele, where it had been lying neglected in the corner of the office, under a small whiteboard covered in work scribble.

And as I was reading the work scribble, and feeling quite overwhelmed by all the work I have to do, I absentmindedly played this little diddly - which I decided sounded kind of like it should be a ringtone - so I turned it into one.

If you have an iPhone, you can download it here - just drag it to your ringtones directory in iTunes, and it will show up on your phone when you next sync.

This Is Just To Say

2009-04-15T15:04:00.002+10:00

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

- William Carlos Williams

For Keith

2009-02-24T22:05:00.002+11:00

A friend of mine died today. He wasn't a particularly close friend, or even someone I had spent a long time with. He was a work colleague - we'd worked together at TOWER Software. To Me, Keith was a bit of an enigma - a records manager, ex military, he was organized and careful in his approach to his work. I could always be sure that when I needed a stapler, or sticky tape, that I could find it easily at Keith's desk. When the cancer took hold of him, his desk was often empty. (This made the task of sneaking paperclips much less pleasant. )

Keith's specialty was the JITC (Joint Interoperability Tactical Command) Certification process. If that sounds boring, well, just wait - it gets way more detailed. The US Defense force certifies Record Keeping solutions to ensure that they comply with their strict policy of retention and control. This process is immensely complicated - it requires compliance with literally thousands of different rules and regulations. Because it is so complex, (and so difficult to understand, yet alone comply with), the JITC standard has become something of the Holy Grail in record keeping. TOWER's record keeping software, TRIM Context, was the first system to ever be granted the accreditation under this hyper-complex maze of compliance regulation. This was largely due to the work of Keith Cameron - a dilligent, smart, and careful man, who paid attention to the detail.

His was a kind of talent that I am deeply envious of. There is no way that I could possibly be even vaguely competent at the kind of work that Keith did. I am too short-minded, too impatient, and not careful enough to watch the details. As you go through your life, you meet people who are different to you. At first you might be tempted to mock them, or to give them a wide berth, because they don't fit into the way you see the world.

Over time, I've become profoundly appreciative of those people like Keith, who think differently to the way you think. They are an opportunity for you to learn something about yourself.

The world lost Keith today. Like lots of us, he was a husband, and a father. He had an infectious laugh, and a great attitude. I remember that when I last saw him, at my farewell from TOWER, he gave me a hug. It was a bit awkward, and I think we both knew that it was a permanent goodbye. We were a couple of colleagues, who respected and liked each other. It seemed the right thing to do.

So, Thanks Man! - Although it's only work, and not "real life" - your presence in my life for a couple of years was important to me. And the work we did together was always great fun.

Money the money money

2008-09-19T23:03:00.007+10:00

This Financial Crisis on Wall Street thing started me thinking.

Since we arrived in the US, I've been contemplating how strange it is that America seems more concerned with money than it does with people. And now, with a trillion dollars already handed out to high finance, and discussions about even more massive handouts, well - it's pretty clear who America loves the most.

For me to send my children to University here in the US will cost me about half a million dollars, assuming average current College prices. If I get sick, say with an expensive disease like cancer, I could be easily looking at 300,000 dollars a year in treatment costs. When it comes to preserving my personal health, or my ability to contribute to society, the United States wants to contribute absolutely nothing. And yet, the US Government will spend trillions of dollars - that's over a thousand billion dollars resuscitating businesses that have effectively done stupid, bad things. The kind of thing that you should go out of business if you do.

The injustice, at least from where I sit, is huge. This bailout money is not coming from a giant bank vault filled with cash. It's a promise. It's a repayment plan - a credit deal imposed on taxpayers. Indirectly, it's coming out of people's pockets over the next 50 years. And these people are the same people saving for college, and arguing with HMOs over their cancer coverage.

This is more money than has been spent to date on the war in Iraq.

Conservative estimates on the cost of providing health care insurance to cover every uninsured American would cost 90 billion dollars. That's less than one tenth of the money already spent on the bailouts.

Let's be clear here - America now has her citizens shoveling their personal cash - cash that they haven't earned yet into the pockets of rich Wall Street stock brokers and investment bankers, at the same time that they are struggling to pay for things that most other governments provide for free.

Is this really government for the people?

Thinking of Illinois

2008-08-15T01:38:00.001+10:00

I sit, pensively leaning over my keyboard, stilled for the first time in an hour.

The lilting piano music had caught part of my conscience. I stare out the window at the Virginia sunshine, fading in the afternoon. The green, filtered light falls dappled onto the lawn between me and the dogwood tree at the gate. An elderly gentleman pedals along James street, wearing a blue denim hat and a white T-shirt.

Somewhere, a fanfare announces the advent of something. Some kind of thought dances elusively as I stare abjectly into the world. And then it hits me. That the time spent is gone. That great intentions and potential are worthless. The future is also worthless. Green light is reflected from the trees in an instant.

I think about it now.

This life

2008-07-19T12:10:00.005+10:00

I haven't seriously written anything here forever. I was re-reading some old posts, and realising that I really liked reading them. So, in the interests of posterity...

Living in America for the last two years has been a wonderful adventure. It's been strange, and entertaining, and frustrating and all the things that life probably should be, if you're trying to make a decent go of it. But, times change, and the lure of Australia is calling us back across the Pacific. So, me and the family are going to pull up stumps and head on home in October. (I still haven't figured out baseball. )

This brings a huge amount of stress, and excitement, and chaotic planning, and other things that life probably should be, if you're trying to make a decent go of it. I feel like I have two different todo lists - one for work and one for home. And when I look at each of them, I think - yeah, I can do that in two and a half months. The trouble is, there's two of them...

Cognitive Bias is a strange thing. When you look at the list, you recognize a huge series of strange ways of thinking - because they are underly the way you think.

I was musing the other day about the kind of person who re-defines failure as success. This is a pretty common scenario - typically arrogant, ego-centric folks who are afraid of failure tend to be very dismissive of any effort. Not so much because they actually think it can't be done - more that they don't want to risk being seen as committing to something that failed. These folks will often be so adamant that a project will fail, that they will subconciously sabotage a project - just to be sure that they can fold their arms and say - "I told you so."

That's not something I've experienced of late - just something that I recalled - given that I haven't really been in "the workforce" since Dean and I started Infovark. Working for a startup of your own with no customers is a wonderful experience! We've been working really, really hard - but the kind of focus that you get when you have one single thing to do is really motivating.

There's a lot of risk and anxiety in our project. Most startups fail. But I feel a huge kind of zen satisfaction that comes from grabbing an idea and wrestling it into existence. I'm not sure how it will be received - that's where the anxiety comes from - but I am completely confident that the idea is a good one, and the implementation has been done right.

My kids are on the extended Virginia summer holidays, and are musing about getting ready for bed. My precious wife has put up with so much of an absent husband through all this crazy working, and yet she still seems happy to see me when I come home.

It's a charmed life, this one. Just trying to make a decent go of it :)

That's SO Raven.

2008-07-15T12:36:00.002+10:00

You know how it is - You're busy working , trying to get your startup to beta.

Then Little Headed Simon pops up and posts you some link he saw on boing boing.

And then he says that the link isn't really that interesting, but the way he misread the headline was actually much more interesting.

So then you say - "you should make a game out of that..."

Yeah, yeah I know- that's like every other day, right?

Except that this time, He actually did.

LHS - you are seven different coloured lasers of awesome.

My highest score is 2.

Now

2008-05-08T09:29:00.004+10:00

Here's a first. This post has a soundtrack.

The reason this post has a soundtrack, is because this mp3 is a recording of the music I was playing with my band on the weekend, when I came to this realization. And somewhere in the middle of a somewhat self-indulgent but very satisfying twelve-eight blues progression, this weird notion of immediacy hit me. So, I thought I'd attempt to share it. Press play, if you didn't already, and see if you can follow me on this one...

The realization comes from this notion that when you're playing music, as soon as you play a note, it's gone. I know that's kind of obvious, but when you're playing with people who are much better than you (which is always a good thing to do) you really have to concentrate. And I found myself concentrating on which note to play, and which change to make, when. But once I had "made it", and played the right note, it was gone. It might as well have never been there.

There were other changes coming up, but they were a fair way away. Part of my brain was keeping an eye out for those. And part was feeling kind of proud of the fact that I'd managed to keep it together so far.

And then it dawned on me, that all of this past and future stuff was kind of a distraction. The only thing I really needed to pay attention to - the one thing I needed to do right - was to play this note. The next one. The one right now.

Which led me to question my internal motivation. Mainly. I just wanted the music to sound great. But, part of me was keen to avoid the 'knowing glare' from my bandmates, if I messed up.
People have evolved a natural tendency to evaluate each other. Sometimes intentionally, othertimes almost subliminally, you're evaluating the people you meet in your life. As an extremely social animal, humans have a very complex reputation management system, which helps us decide who we should engage with, and for what. This is an extremely important skill, and it's one that may be the cornerstone of all society.

But this Reputation Mangement System also sucks. Reputations are easily damaged. Sometimes they are percieved as damaged, when they're not. It can lead to feelings of low self worth, and anxiety. (This is why people fear public speaking more than death.)

Your reputation is really just a weird arbitrary evaluation that starts with people who have met you. It's based, almost totally, on your past activities, and your future potential. So, I thought that maybe, just like the music, that it too is a distraction. That the only thing you really need to be concerned with is right now. How you were in the past is gone. And how you will be in the future is completely irrelevant.

I found it to be an amazingly uplifting thought. You should give it a go. Just focus on your actions right now. Pretend that there is no future, or no past.

You don't have to rely on those things to "average you out".

Anyway, this is all getting a bit deep. But, it really stuck with me.

And I wanted an excuse to share some of Carl and Tommy's awesome guitar solos.

:)

Did you know?

2008-02-06T07:09:00.000+11:00

That NetVibes let's you create your own page title?

Cool huh? They really let you type a lot of stuff in there. That's very nice of them.

Groundhog's Day

2008-02-03T08:50:00.000+11:00

Hmmm.

Simon was picking on me the other day for not being a good blogger any more. (Part of me was all offended - "You are incorrect - I'm teh awesome!", but mostly I was thinking - "That must mean that he thought I was a good blogger once - which is still pretty cool.")

Alas, It's been a really long time since I've had much interesting to say, and most importantly the time to actually say it. Running a startup business is hard work, it takes a lot of time from you, and most of my precious blogging time has been spent on getting stuff together over on the infovark blog. It's a good site, and I'm very proud of it, but I admit that it does lack the kind of personal-ness that I like to read in blogs. Reading over my old posts here, I tended to write very honestly, and I didn't need to have a topic - I'd just waffle on about any old crap. Corporate blogging is quite a bit less freestyle, and more structured.

So, in an effort to recapture my blogging mojo, let's take stock of the things that are in my head today.

I like to play music. I've been getting together with an old friend from TOWER each weekend and rocking out playing in a band. We're pretty bad, but man - it is such a fun thing to do! filling your whole self with music is a wonderful experience.

Quitting TOWER was a really good thing for me to do. Life in the USA as an IT consultant is perhaps the most tiring and time-consuming thing I can imagine. I spent way too much time focussing on my job, and not enough time on my family. My job was interesting, but my Family are much more important. Now my job is great, and I have more time and flexibility than ever.

My kids are obsessed with FancyPants 2. It's really fun!

And, on that note - I have to go and fix the toilet. That will surely be at least as fun...

And the award for "Best Use of Flash Ever" goes to...

2008-01-17T09:37:00.001+11:00

http://producten.hema.nl/

Why can't all online shopping experiences be like this?

(no,no - not in Dutch... Go see for yourself :)

The Nerdiest Video Ever

2008-01-03T15:07:00.000+11:00

Have you ever seen one of those 'viral internet videos' and then said something like:

"You know, that's the nerdiest thing I've ever seen."

Well, Be prepared to eat your own words:

Eat them! Tasty Wordy Goodness. Right?

Le Minivan trop-plein!

2007-12-18T12:42:00.000+11:00

What sort of crazy people jump in the car to go North to Canada in Winter?

Well, that would be me and my family. We're currently in Quebec, Quebec - the most French place in Canada. My French is limited. No, check that, it's actually somewhere between non-existent and hopeless. Thanks to Madame Brown in Year 9, I can sort of say some stuff. (Most of it wrong) Anyway, we've been enjoying the snow - so far there's been just under a metre.

We've been swimming outside in -17 degrees, Cross country skiing in Montreal, been to the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa (including the coolest children's museum) driven through the driving snow (It was driven mainly by the wind) and somehow, haven't managed to drive each other crazy - despite having eight people in our dodge minivan.

(we managed to rope Ali's sister Jen and my Sister Kirilee into the adventure.)

Anyways - there's free internet here at the best western in Quebec, so I'll try to get some pictures and more impressions up soon. Adieu!

Binary Solo!

2007-11-30T09:55:00.000+11:00

Oh dear... my sides ache.

And it's all thanks to the Flight of the Conchords..

(via Big Headed Simon)

Idle Hands, the Devil and Heffeweisen

2007-10-25T12:18:00.000+10:00

Just cleaning the kitchen after a busy days worth of work on the infovark project. Sometimes you have those days where you feel you're working your very hardest, and yet, things seem to go backwards just to spite you. After a solid 6 hours worth of code, less then 2% of the 300+ unit tests that we've written were passing. Oh well. I guess you get that on the big jobs.

I was just pondering, as I was scrubbing those pesky pans (does it ever seem to you that all pans seem perpetually dirty? It's just like you're cleaning them, but you can't really scrub off anything more than one layer of dirt. Pan dirt is special. I think it contributes to much tastier food.)

Anyway - oh yeah - pondering. I was thinking how sad it is that no matter how well humans adhere to whatever their particular religious code may be, that there will always be someone somewhere else who would view them as condemned to some kind of hell. If you're the world's most pious Christian, then the Orthodox Jewish faith would see you as going to hell. And the Muslim folk. And a bunch of other, not quite exactly the same but similar divisions of the Christian faith.

If you're the best Buddhist ever, and you never even step on an ant or swat a mosquito for your whole life, then, there will be a bunch of Christians who will be honestly very sad that you never "saw the light" and "accepted Jesus into your heart". Your religious peers may well revere you, but to everyone else, you're just plain old damned.

It makes me feel a bit sad for all those people striving to be faithful, knowing that somewhere, someone will condemn them.

Personally - I'm an atheist, so as far as anyone else is concerned , I'm going to their own individual religion's version of hell, and I'm okay with that, because frankly, the whole think seems completely nuts.

But scrubbing pans is universal. We all have to do it at some point. In the pan scrubbers religion, nobody is damned. We all get to go to pan heaven, where the stainless steel shines so bright, we all gotta wear shades.

Or something. It's late :)

Changing the 'We'

2007-10-15T05:44:00.000+10:00

(This is cross-posted with my new company blog, inforvark.com
I'm pretty excited about the new job, new challenges, and so you can expect to see more project management, Enterprise 2.0 technology and software posts happening over at the infovark site. I'll try and keep Over The Falls up to date with personal stuff, but no promises! )

For most people, the use of the nominative plural pronoun (’we’) tends to refer to themselves and to the other significant people who happen to be sharing their lives.

If you work for a company, or any kind of collaborative venture where there are multiple people working towards a similar goal, you’ll find that you use the word ‘we’ an awful lot. For example ‘We need to refactor that code, and we should probably add some comments’ or ‘We need to get our TPS reports done by Monday’.

I think that the use of the word ‘We’ is one of the nicest things about being at work. That one little word indicates collaboration is occurring. It shows that you accept some joint responsibility for your success (or failure), and it reminds you that you’re all in this together. Whenever you start a new job, or a new project, the first few times you say it, you notice that you just said it. It’s a thing, at first. Then it quickly becomes part of the corporate vernacular, and you aren’t as aware of it anymore.

Personally, in the last five years, most of the time I said ‘We’, I was referring to TOWER Software. TOWER make a well regarded ECM suite called TRIM Context, which is designed for the government and highly regulated markets. After 5 years, I decided that I was brave/crazy enough to try something on my own, and was fortunate to find a kindred spirit in my TOWER Colleague, Dean.

And so for both of us, Infovark is a new kind of ‘We’. We‘re a small startup based in Northern Virginia, who have a vision for changing the way people work together.

Anytime somebody says ‘We’, we want Infovark to be there supporting them. To make it easier to share information. To help them make decisions. To help them get to know each other. And to take away the burden of complex, enterprise software that is hard to use and understand.

It’s an ambitious goal, but it’s one that we’re utterly committed to.

And so, it starts! We hope you’ll stick with us, and share the journey.

Quote for the day...

2007-09-11T23:14:00.000+10:00

“If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less."

- General Eric Shinseki.

Found on R.Todd Stephens new collaborage blog, via Jesse.

Inspiration

2007-09-07T08:44:00.000+10:00

Apparently Einstein once said:

'The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we used to create them.'

That's way cool, if it's true. And even if not, it's still way cool :)
*

Social Networks ate my blog!

2007-08-04T10:26:00.000+10:00

Hello!

I haven't updated my blog in forever - and personally I blame Web 2.0.

Between Twitter, and now Facebook, and my crazy work commitments, I seem way too busy to even think of anything interesting to say...

NeoHippy Leanings

2007-06-22T11:53:00.000+10:00

Simon's new blog, The Cluttered Desk, talks about how people in your head when you read are composites of people you know.

It's true - it reminds me of how I read somewhere that one theory of dreaming is that all of the people you meet when wandering around in your dreams are really you. Ocassionally in a vaguely lucid dream, you can become aware of this, which makes weird dreams even weirder... But on some level, this makes sense - for instance, while you think you are talking to your Wife, you're really talking to the way you imagine your Wife to be - it's not like she's actually in your head...

Reading is similar to dreaming in that respect. The late Kurt Vonnegut, in his last interview, said of reading that he thought reading was a difficult task. If you could do it right, you could be transported to the murky waters of the Atlantic with Herman Melville, or a deserted tropical island with Defoe.

But if you couldn't do it, I guess there's always TV, right?

Lifehack - Nothing is Easy

2007-06-01T07:37:00.000+10:00

"I'm annoyed!" I announced to nobody in particular.

I pushed the desk away from me and rolled back into the middle of the cubicle.

"What by?" Dean asked, turning away from his machine.
I thought for a bit.

"Well... I'm annoyed that things don't just come into existence because I think of them."

"Uh -right... You're actually annoyed by that?"

And you know, I was. I mean, I still am.

In software development, solving conceptual problems isn't always easy, (or even possible) but it is usually rewarding. Unfortunately, just solving the problem isn't enough. Once all the hard thinking is done, you then have to sit there, and wiggle your fingers in a very exact and particular sequence, until your design is completely implemented. Then remove all the mistypes and little deviances from your perfect unimplementable design.Then re-test it, over and over. And that's the thing that's annoying.

And the more I think about it, the more this little truism seems to apply to everything in the world. Knowing what you have to do is all fine and dandy. It's the doing of it that's annoying.

For example, I know I have to get up and go into the office tomorrow. I won't want to. I will want to lay in bed, and listen to the Typewriter Bird outside the window. I know I should eat less, and excercise more. I know that watching CSI:Miami is a complete waste of time. I know that. Doesn't all that knowing count for something?

Bah. Being smart enough to know what I need to do should be enough!

But, one thing I do know with my thinking brain is that reality doesn't work like that. That nothing comes as easily as thinking.

And so, lately, I've resolved to pursue reality with a little more vigor than I previously have. To work harder at materializing these clever thoughts into actions and artifacts.

And central to this, is the mantra that 'Nothing is Easy." Essentially, I've just assumed, slightly pessimistically, that everything I need to do will take more attention and concerted effort than my default appraisal might expect.

And so far, it's been a remarkably liberating thing. I find that at the end of the day, I've done much more, simply as a consequence of expecting to do much more.

Today, for every action you conciously pursue, from preparing breakfast to all your daily work tasks, remember that it will take MORE than you think.

That nothing is easy.

Aw...

2007-05-31T13:22:00.000+10:00

For some reason, I was a little bit disappointed when I visited:

http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com

Every Good Domain Name is taken. Here's Why.

Random Link of Random Joy

2007-05-23T00:06:00.000+10:00

What's not good for eating soup? Not the moon, that's for sure.

TeaCups!

2007-05-21T03:22:00.001+10:00

Blather...

2007-05-18T22:41:00.000+10:00

Well, I'm still alive - and feeling largely refreshed after a long over due vacation to DisneyWorld, the happiest place on earth. To try and get y'all back up to speed (yes, they really do say that down in the South), here's a bulleted list of stuff that I've found interesting...

As well as being the title of this post, Blather is a plug-in that my friend Stilly wrote for his gTalkBot, that allows you to publish all your twitter-esque daily musings to your Blosxom powered blog. Very cool, and Stilly's Blathering is pretty entertaining too...
While on the topic of Stilly, his second book just got published! - it's a how to guide on building your own PVR using Myth TV. I had a go at this a while ago, and it was really kind of confusing, especially for a Linux N00b like me. A book is long overdue...
My friend Ian Schue, who works with me here at TOWER NA has started blogging. Apparently the birth of the universe, donuts, quantum computing and giant ants are all somewhow connected... A great read!
My lovely Sister-In-Law, Ruby, now a proud mum for the second time, has also given birth to a blog;
I've also enjoyed a vicarious European vacation, courtesy of Simon and Karina.
I finally bought a Das Keyboard II - easily the best keyboard I've ever typed on. If you spend a lot of time at a keyboard, you should consider getting one of these.

Lindsay went to Disneyland and rode the teacups too! I have to dig out the vomit inducing footage of the whole Taylor family squished into a single teacup...
If you were wondering what else I'm up to, I'm been slightly more vigilant at updating my twitter feed than my blog.

What does ECM Stand for?

2007-04-19T06:54:00.000+10:00

(Apart from Enterpise Content Management...)

Ron Miller's post on returning from AIIM really rang loud with me.

"...It was the complete lack of innovation. I can't help feeling that ECM has lost its wow factor. It has matured to the point it really has nothing new and exciting to offer customers."

I work for an ECM company. It's a good one, and my company has plenty of experience and a great product. But I can't shake the feeling that the whole world of enterprise software is utterly devoid of any real innovation. There's nobody thinking different. The most interesting thing to really happen to the ECM industry in the last three years has been SharePoint, and it's not really very interesting at all.

Add to that the whole round of market consolidation that's happened recently has ensured that things are going to be more consistent than ever before. There's no pressure on any one of the major ECM vendors to deliver anything revolutionary. The RFP process ensures that the whole industry is focussed on box-checking, staid and static feature sets that deliver questionable value. Even worse, that same procurement process ultimately places the decisions into the hands of people who aren't going to really interact with the solution all that much - so the people who use the software aren't important enough to effect change.

And so, there's no real impetus for change in the market. It's more about business as usual. About services costs, and new license revenue wars. About sales demos and shipping software that nobody uses. About delivering the same old stuff.

Although I can't find the reference, I believe it was Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of some of the world's best video games, who once said:

"If all you do is give customers what they are asking for, you will be able to keep them happy. But you will never be able to really surprise them."

It's not the kind of thing that is going to inspire the next generation of people to become better at what they do, or save them from ridiculous working hours.

John Newton and the guys over at Alfresco have recognized that this is the case. But it's going to take more than just a different business model. Safe is risky, remember? For a long time I've held on to the notion that what we really needed was some truly great, inspirational software. But even this might not be enough. (Hey, maybe enterprises want boring, hard to learn and use unhelpful software. It does keep them busy, after all.)

I really feel that software needs to improve people's lives, or else it's just a complete waste of time. Change the world, or go home. It's Tail-Chasing. It's nothing more than a bunch of stuff that we all did while we occupied the planet in order to 'pay the bills'.

There is such a huge amount of potential in both our technology and our ingenuity, to improve the way that we do things. And at the heart of all this activity are those nebulous organizations of people that we refer to as 'Enterprises'. Managing their content is important, no doubt. But improving the way they function is more so.

Better functioning enterprises benefit us all -because we are their employees, their customers, their citizens. Enterprises only exist because they are made up of people, and they exist solely to interact with people like us.

Striving to maintain the status quo is actively retarding the (already slow) development of enterprises, and that doesn't help anyone at all.

If they work better, we all work better.

What's better than actual tax?

2007-04-18T12:04:00.000+10:00

Virtual Tax!

I just spent WAY too long in the local Fairfax H&R Block, waiting for Michael, the local tax guy to figure out how to do my taxes. While he was "out back" trying to cajole the system into filing my 1116 (Foreign Tax Credit) form, I sneakily opened a web browser on his machine...

The default home page was an internal intranet site. It told me, in delighted H1, that H&R Block had just opened an island on second life.

"No way!", I hear you exclaim (Or is that just me thinking loud...)

Way...

As long as you don't have to pay tax twice on your second life... although I guess it kind of makes sense. Incidentally, my tax 'burden' here in the US for the last year ended up being the princely tithe of 185 dollars - apparently because I have four kids. Still, it seems crazy low. I don't know who's paying the taxes over here, but it turns out that it's not me...

Nerds...

2007-04-17T12:50:00.000+10:00

Here are some pictures of nerdy, nerdy things.

That is all.

Life in a cupboard...

2007-04-15T10:41:00.000+10:00

This is my new 'office'. It's a cupboard. Because we have Ali's Sister and family staying with us in the crapshack at the moment, I had to forgo my study to be used as an extra bedroom - so I moved into the cupboard in the hallway.

I know, it sounds a bit nuts, but I really like working in here! There's no distractions, I can shut the door, It has great soundproofing and acoustics so I can crank up the music - and best of all, nobody can come in and talk to me, because there's no room for more than one person. So if people want to talk to me, they have to wait until I come out.

Joel Spolsky is currently trying to find a bigger office for his Fog Creek developers. Maybe he just needs to move them all into cupboards...

Creamy Snuff?

2007-04-15T08:04:00.000+10:00

Okay, this is just plain weird.

In India, you can buy Toothpaste packed with Tobacco.

"In a state of despair or when you are depressed, use Ipco Creamy Paste to drive out the blues. It will change your attitude and your reactions so that your responses will be positive, leading to improvement in your state of mind."

Um... Okay.

Crazy nicotine dreams...

Yep - We can Mow that....

2007-04-10T11:00:00.000+10:00

Since late Summer, Simon and I have been working on a way to fix the Craftsman Riding Mower that we bought for fifty bucks. It had been left in the rain for a year, after it refused to start. Well, we replaced the fuel line (it was full of some weird looking fungus), replaced the starter motor (unnecssarily, it turned out) replaced the battery and the ignition switch, banged one of the engine mounts back into shape, drank an awful lot of beer, and finally - Voila! We can mow anything!

Here's the maiden voyage:

And Even better - It can tow kids!

Low tech is good

2007-04-08T12:11:00.000+10:00

I really got a kick out of Miranda July's new website for her upcoming book. (link via Seth Godin)

(You know, there was a time when it wouldn't have been possible to build yourself a website using the top of your refrigerator.)

It seems to me that the best marketing in the world is the stuff that comes honestly from people.

For all our new-fandangled technologies, various broadcast media, and in a world that is full to overflowing with 'Your call is important to us' style corporate bullshit, A Single Conversation between two people still counts more than everything else.

I guess it's because as people, we're all hardwired to listen to each other.

(Well, most of us, anyway :)

Papparazzia

2007-04-07T00:33:00.000+10:00

My Brother Grae is a photographer for Snapper Media, one of the leading "Independent Photo Agencies" in Australia. Basically, he's what might commonly be referred to as "the Paparazzi", (although he does a lot less street photography these days)

He's currently in Melbourne, following the celebrities around the children's hospital.

While such a job might seem glamorous, and the sort of thing that Video Games are made of, His latest post about the stark reality of his current gig really touched a nerve with me.

You can keep up to date with his travels over on his blog, Please Don't Punch Me.

Patrick's Science Show

2007-04-01T12:43:00.000+10:00

My Son Patrick decided to prove the theory of gravity with some help from his baby brother Lincoln, our tree house, a large log, and a shoe...

Thanks to Simon for producing, directing and uploading the episode!

The Path Less Travelled...

2007-04-01T12:07:00.000+10:00

Speaking of Red and Blue Pills, one of my oldest friends has bravely declined the suppository in favour of starting along his own path.

Marimba is a service designed to connect music students and teachers using some of the latest "Web 2.0" technology (there are only a few months left where I'll actually be able to write that phrase...)

Cam Grant is one of the smartest and most talented people I know. Besides teaching me all about XML way before it was cool, A long time ago (can it really be more than ten years?) he introduced me to Jazz Fusion, by bringing home a box set of Weather Report CDs.

And now, he's decided to create his own kind of fusion from his two great passions, technology and music.

But let's face it, technology is really only of interest when it does something amazing. By helping musicians become better, and to improve and grow, Cam's really helping to fill the world with new music - which is just a truly inspiring thing to be doing.

If you're planning on being the next Jaco Pastorius, you're a music teacher, or you are just thinking of taking up those piano lessons from when you quit in the seventh grade, you should drop by and bookmark AcousticPath.com - I have no doubt that it will be worthwhile for you - and maybe for all of us :)

Red Pill/Blue Pill

2007-04-01T02:04:00.001+10:00

Simon sent me this comic the other day. Like him, I'm not sure of it's origins, but it sure made me laugh...

Here be Trolls...

2007-03-27T12:29:00.000+10:00

Just a quick shout out to Kathy Sierra, who is sadly seriously considering never posting again as a result of some seriously odious behaviour. Kathy's blog, Creating Passionate users has been a great source of inspiration to me, and is always required reading.

The thing about nasty troll-folk, is that the threats really rattle you. They get into your head and live with you. It's stupid, and sad. You don't want them too, but they do, nonetheless. I know it's the internet and everything, but it's made up of PEOPLE, OKAY! You shouldn't say anything you wouldn't say in person.

Anyway, If you're a fan, make sure you stop by the comments section and show your support. And if you aren't, you should stop by and read the archives - you'll probably become one :)

Watch the Cricket World Cup for Free - P2PTV

2007-03-25T06:14:00.000+10:00

If you're a cricket fan who happens to be stuck far, far away from people who care about cricket, like say, America... there is a solution!

If you have access to the Internet, and half decent bandwidth you can download a program called sopcast, (program download here) which is a clever spin (probably from off to leg...) on bitTorrent, and other p2p sharing protocols - basically it allows one 'broadcaster' to share a channel as a torrent, allowing for other watchers to pass bits on to each other after they watch them.

It's kind of like watching TV at someone Else's house, except you bring their TV over to your house. Oh, and you don't know who they are. And then you send your TV over to some other random strangers house. Okay, so it's nothing like that at all....

Anyway it seems to work pretty well for me. The odd dropout, but hey - it's free - so who's complaining?

Channel 21237 has the Cricket World Cup - C'mon Aussie!

Stuck in Seattle

2007-03-22T12:32:00.000+11:00

I'm over here in the Pacific Northwest, at the Seattle Tacoma Airport, having just given a TRIM Demonstration to a potential customer.

I haven't really had much of a chance to see the city, or much of anything, although the view from the plane flying in over Pugent Sound was really quite spectacular. It's really weird seeing a giant mountain sticking out of the clouds. That just looked kind of... wrong.

Unfortunately, I have to wait over here until midnight to catch the redeye flight back home - all the airports close on the east coast, so it's not possible to catch a flight after about 1PM in the afternoon once you factor in the time zone difference. Which sucks. Airports are just not that interesting.

And that's why you get boring blog posts like this. Nothing to say. Bored. Just read this post forty-five times if you want to approximate something like the kind of boredom that 9 hours at an airport can bring.

* sigh *

TwitterVision

2007-03-20T14:07:00.000+11:00

What's better than seeing what your friends are doing right now?

Seeing what Everyone is doing!

Twittervision is a great mash-up of google maps and twitter.

Stare at global banality people. It's real!

More Twitterage

2007-03-19T09:17:00.000+11:00

Well, I'm currently up to day 5 in my twitter experiment. And, you know what? I'm starting to get it. At first, I just signed up all by myself, but that was boring, so I nagged my friends to join. (I can be a surprisingly effective nagger. )

Once you have a few people making updates, the whole thing changes. I don't have time to read lots of long detailed posts each day, even from people I really like - but I will happily consume 10 100-word updates from my friends as to what's going on. It kind of distills down to the essence of social media.

The other thing that comes to mind is that we're all so disconnected these days. I spend lots of time talking to people, but comparatively few of them are actually here with me. Twitter gives you a tiny bit of the joy that you might experience if you were spending time with your twitter pals, except it provides it in quick, bite-size chunks.

140 words isn't enough to boast, or to really bamboozle people with your intellect - so Twitter posts seem more honest and personal. Like Haiku, there's the challenge of trying to fit more into the restricted posting window than you should be able to convey..

Anyways, I'll post some more once the experiment officially ends on Tuesday. Till then, you can get up to the minute updates on what I'm doing (like you care!) by heading over to http://twitter.com/goodgord.

Join up! - Add me as a friend! And if you have already done those things, then update!

Mind the Trees - Amazon Surfing

2007-03-17T02:08:00.000+11:00

This Video is of what maybe the longest wave in the world, the "Pororoca" or annual tidal shift from the Atlantic Ocean through the Amazon river. Incredible!

More here.

Twitter Schmitter,.

2007-03-13T10:36:00.000+11:00

Okay - I've looked at Twitter.

And after some serious souls searching, I have to say, I don't get it.

It looks like a weird kind of micro-blogger thingy. I don't see how it could possibly be interesting, or really anything...

But, I read TechCrunh, and Scoble, and it's all like twitter-mania. Even Barack Obama and John Edwards are Twittering?

Okay fine, 901AM, you win. I'll give it a week.

One measly week of additional meaningless internet blog micro-excreta. And after that, I'll be able to conclusively denounce the whole thing as kiddy nonsense. Okay?

You can find my twitterings (?) at http://twitter.com/goodgord.

But only for a week.

UPDATE: Okay, I still don't get it. Apparently it has something to do with cats

Apple does it again...

2007-03-08T10:38:00.000+11:00

Those guys over at Apple just don't stop. Check out the latest innovation over at The Onion...
A Product launching product! Now, you really have to be on the cutting edge of innovation for an idea like that!

"Get ready for the future of product introduction," said Jobs, looking resplendent in a black turtleneck and faded jeans. "The iLaunch will be able to make announcements from this, or any other stage, making human participation in generating consumer awareness almost entirely unnecessary."

But - the real question is - can you get it in different colours?...

Rusty's back!

2007-03-08T01:14:00.000+11:00

Rhys returns from the corporate wilderness with his latest web design. Shiny!

You know, you just can't appreciate it through RSS. Graphic designers must really hate that...

Winter snaps

2007-03-05T04:13:00.000+11:00

Some frosty (full colour!) photos from wintertime here in Northern Virginia

Hey Windows! Fetch me a long weight....

2007-03-04T07:12:00.000+11:00

I'll get back to you in oh - a month and a half...grrr

Ubuntu

2007-03-02T15:39:00.000+11:00

This is the first post I've ever written from a Linux OS. To be honest, I never thought I would ever make one. But, just on spec, today I took an old laptop I use occasionally, and installed the latest version of Ubuntu.

The whole installation process took me less than twenty minutes, and you know what? Everything I thought about Linux is wrong. This machine (a Sony Vaio P3 with 512 mg RAM) has a few weird components in it - I assumed that I would have to screw around and look for mouse drivers and do lots of command line typey-typey stuff. Ring up Stilly and ask him what the 'secret word' was to unpack a tarball kind of magic But nope - nothing.

Everything just worked.

Wireless, USB, Graphics, sound, all drives - everything. No hassle. And it looks brilliant! Kind of like a cross between Vista and OSX. Easy. Intuitive. And fast, too. This old machine performs brilliantly - better than it ever ran any version of windows.

And because nearly all my stuff (bookmarks, mail, documents, feeds) are all online and browser based, I haven't had to install or restore anything from backup. My world came with me. It's really never been easier to switch your OS.

Microsoft lost an awful lot when they lost the API war.

And I'm sure they couldn't really care less, but it looks like they've lost me, too.

But Seriosly...

2007-03-01T12:30:00.000+11:00

Seriosity are copping some flak for their unique approach to trying to solve the collaboration problem in the enterprise, in an increasingly information cluttered world.

The application, called 'Attent', works by attaching virtual currency (called 'Serios') to an outlook email. By setting the amount of Serios attached to an email, an information worker can indicate how 'precious' that email is. The Serios, once received, can then be bartered, exchanged, or used to reward employees - (how about spent in an online auction for a week of one developers time..., or used as brownie points towards a raise, or whatever)

While the comments over on TechCrunch seem to universally chastise the approach, I think that these guys are on to something. We need to realise that enterprises are made up of people, not automatons. Rather than mandating corporate behaviour and re-enforcing it with a big stick, the most nimble and effective organizations are going to be the ones that match up processes with the way people are.

Again, if we take Simon's Post on the TOWER Software blog - he obviously doesn't want to file stuff. If left to his own devices, he certainly wouldn't. The system that caters to his laziness is going to result in him being more effective than one that forces unfamiliar behaviour on him. Where Seriosity is concerned, we know that people like to measure things - particularly how favorably they compare with other people. By trying to engineer an enterprise system that plays into the way people instinctively want to behave, they're trying to get more value from their workers.

Trying to replicate the learning curve from modern consumer video games, as Dean says, is not a bad thing - I can't think of many other software forms where the manual is completely irrelevant. (for 'work' enterprise software, remember that even if nobody reads it in Userland, you can guarantee that the help desk guys read it religiously...)

Creating compelling work environments where people can do their work without forcing themselves away from their instinctive behaviour has to be a solid strategy. Lots of those comments were from web 2.0 entrepreneurs saying "Why did they get millions in VC funding for that?"

Leaving aside the question of whether sending Serios with your emails is a good idea, I can see why these guys got the money.

It's because they're trying to engineer the people, not the systems.

Why bother with filing?

2007-02-27T13:38:00.000+11:00

Simon dropped something of a megaton bomb on the Tower Software blog the other day. For those of you who can't be bothered with the link, the (heavily paraphrased) summary goes like this:

"If I mis-file something, it takes me all day to find it. It also takes me all day to organize my filing cabinet. So, in a world where Google can give me stuff no matter where I file it, Why should I bother filing anything at all?"

ECM Systems, like TRIM Context, are often heavily based on information science, and encourage a kind of "virtual filing".

It reminds me a bit of my own post in 2005, where I was musing on exactly the same thing, perhaps unsurprisingly, after having to search through my personal piles of mess, just like Simon...

A few years have passed, and I've cultivated some partial answers...

Retrieval - Filing things properly and retrieving them is still the single most efficient way to manage data. Finding a document that's been filed properly will always be faster. It sounds to me like Simon organizes things much better than I do- if he'd been able to remember where he filed his passport, he would have been in and out of his study in no time at all. Sure, an unstructured mega-sort and index is getting more practical as hardware and processing power increases, but it will never be as efficient as finding something precisely where it's expected. High speed hunt and pick is always going to cost more, and take longer. There's a reason Google only completes a full internet crawl every 3 months or so...

Business Topology - a structured repository is worth a lot more in terms of business value, because it can teach you about your business, how it really works (as opposed to how you think it works) and can also give you clues as to what you need to do to in order to optimize it. Being able to see exactly where people are doing their work, and tracking and reporting on it is they key to operational efficiency. Nowadays, your information IS your organization. Is your organization a big vault filled with random stuff?

Context - Just like I was saying about Pandora - sometimes it's not what you're looking for, but what's filed next to it that counts. If I can find an email about a given project, all by itself it's not very valuable. Within a folder containing everything else that ever occured during the life of that project, it's business context becomes apparent. Now, instead of looking for an email with the word 'Strategic Plan' in it, I have every single business document that contributed to the Strategic Plan being formed. That's powerful stuff.

Control - If nothing was filed, every single piece of controlled information would need to be manually assigned at the document level. Having a structured and laid out filing plan allows you to apportion security and business logic in a much less granular, more sensible way - it's part of what allows you to scale. Applying security policy to a non-definitive search: 'show me all the things that contain the word missile' is hardly responsible. You might miss stuff. And what's worse, you'll never really know for sure...

So, there are more reasons to file in a modern Google World than you might think. Unstructured Search is all about making sense of chaos - systems like TRIM are more about organizing data when it comes in, and keeping the chaos to a minimum to encourage optimal knowledge retrieval.

Although it pains me somewhat to say it, I think that responsible, truly effective information management is really more about files and folders and policy than it is about giant supercomputer AI robots indexing a massive vault of random assorted business confetti looking for patterns.

(That doesn't mean that giant supercomputer AI robots aren't cool though. They are. )

Electric Mario

2007-02-26T05:08:00.000+11:00

Has anyone else noticed that the logo for Newfoundland Power and the logo for Nintendo Power are almost identical?

Probably just me...

And, in a quest for more girlfriends...

2007-02-22T14:15:00.000+11:00

... The worlds engineers are having an

"Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day!" as part of Engineering Week

It's tomorrow - February 22, 2007.

More here.

Some of the best software engineers I've ever worked with have been girls - it's just that comparatively there have been hardly any of them...

Me, I'm going to sit down and watch cyberchase with my daughter...

blog == about == blog

2007-02-22T14:03:00.000+11:00

I've been blogging a lot over at the TOWER Blog lately, and that's made me resuscitate my feed reader (something about having to have some interesting content...)

So I fired up blogbridge, but then, as always, I went looking for something better... Why can't I pick a feed reader and stay with it? I don't know, I just can't. Form is freed from content! I want my content to look and behave ... better!

Anyway, I ended up coming back to the Google reader. They've obviously listened to the worlds complaints, and they have made it significantly better. In fact, I might even go so far to say that I'm delighted with it.

I've always felt that RSS feeders should be web based, but both bloglines and newsgator gave me the shits for various reasons. For a while, I was using the Google homepage, but that's too much hassle, and doesn't really track what you've read or where you've been.

If you were one of those guys (like me) who checked out Google reader in the beginning and dismissed it, you should go back.

It's good.

And it just further entrenches all my personal information into the Google machine.

Is there any other way?

*sigh*

Whee!

2007-02-20T01:38:00.000+11:00

Look how much fun you can have with three inches of icy snow, an abandoned brightly lit parking lot, a two dollar toboggan, and a few beers...

Awesome.

Advice for the hungover...

2007-02-18T02:05:00.000+11:00

I just returned from Tampa, Florida, where this years North American TOWER Software TRIM User Forum (TUF) was held.

Yes, it's all about ECM, and TRIM, but as nearly anyone who's attended a TUF can tell you, it's also about having lots of fun, and something called 'Customer Advocacy', which often seems to entail a lot of drinking...

My mate Greenie, another Aussie over here with TOWER came up to me the morning after the night before, looking positively green and smelling faintly of vomit:

"Y'know mate..." He said to me,

"I reckon you must have to be really sick to die."

Oh man.. I laughed so much that I had to sit down. Well, mainly because my head was also killing me.

You can read about the much more sensible, work related efforts of the conference over on the TOWER Software Blog

The Wii Help Cat

2007-02-14T07:50:00.000+11:00

With the latest firmware upgrade, my Nintendo Wii seems to have acquired a new feature - this mysterious black cat slinks onto the screen every now and again when the Wii is idle. If you try to grab it, it runs away - unless you sneak up on it with the wiimote very carefully. If you actually manage to pet it, the cat will give you a reward - a useful tip about how to use the Wii Dashboard, or whatever feature you're in.

What a crazy idea - making people work hard for a measly tip! (hang on - that's the whole principle behind the service industry in America...)

And yet, no matter - it's fun! I always try to catch the cat (if I'm lucky enough to have it appear). It dawned on me that if those same tips were presented every time I turned on the Wii, in a boring grey window, that I almost certainly wouldn't read them at all...

Dean and I were discussing yesterday how strange it was that people pay real money to do boring busywork in game worlds, that they wouldn't do in real life. Things like in World of Warcraft ("bring me back my chalice/treasure/pants" or whatever), or the Sims, where people are just managing pretend people's boring lives, instead of their own.

Sometimes seemingly bad design (intentionally making things harder to get at) can make them more attractive, and ultimately have greater impact.

You can read a full analysis of the help cat ,(and see a a video of it in action) over at Lost Garden.
Actually you should really go and do that, it's a good article on usability and design...

A Wiki Novel

2007-02-12T13:02:00.000+11:00

One silly Christmas Party in 2005, My colleagues and I decided that what the world needed was a wiki novel. That anyone could edit. So, after a few beers, we started one, with the sentence:

"It's a compelling story of Vernon "FireFox" Wilson, a crack addicted journalist who decides to leave his humdrum job and become a ninja....
Alternatively, it could be about something good."

I kind of forgot about it, but Big Headed Simon pointed out that the Reluctant CyberProf had mentioned it in one of his essays... Then I kind of forgot about it some more, until Little Headed Simon told me that Penguin are actually doing the same thing, with their new wiki-novel, A Million Penguins.

They're proclaiming that:

" Anyone's allowed to write and edit the world-first novel, A Million Penguins, which is constructed in a similar way to the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia"

World First? I don't think so! We know better, right folks?

Anyways, I went back to our novel, and to my surprise (and secret delight) It had grown to two chapters! Two! Count-em!
(Admittedly, they're not very good chapters, but hey... )

So, if you'd like to hang with the cool kids, and get in on the real world-first wiki novel (instead of those fancy publishing company pretenders), you should drop by and share your literary acumen with the world... :)

Color vs Colour

2007-02-06T13:23:00.000+11:00

I must be thinking in American these days. I just accidentally stumbled on this great site:

Purely on spec - just by typing in the url directly. Once I'd found my colour with no hassle (great site - couldn't possibly be easier) , I realised that the only reason I found it was because I didn't spell colour right....

Synaesthesia

2007-02-05T05:52:00.000+11:00

Check out the wonderful Whitney Music Box, by KrazyDad.

If you liked Electroplankton, you may well find you stare and play with this for a while.

The idea is to turn a harmonic visualizaion (basically dots moving at standard related speeds around a fixed point) into the corresponding harmonic music. The result is hypntoic and beautiful - and very natural sounding.

You can read more about it the theory here.

Going Through the Motions...

2007-02-05T04:24:00.000+11:00

Well, Saturday started okay. Ali and I slept in, while the kids ate cereal and watched cartoons. We woke up and made breakfast. I sat down to do some work, and play with Ruby on Rails some more. I went to the store and bought some coffee and bananas. All in all, everything was shaping up much like a Saturday should. I was happy.

And then, came a strange cry from my 4 year old son.

"Dad! I can't have a wee!"

I'm often a little hard to distract when I'm concentrating, so I guess some part of my brain might have registered the strangeness behind that statement, while I was still mostly trying to divine the magic of ActiveRecord...

"Aggh! There's water all over my feet!"

Okay, that made me stand up, and step down the hall to the bathroom.

Yep, there was indeed about two inches of clean water all over the floor - repeated attempts by Link to flush the blocked up toilet had generated a nice cascading fountain spilling out all over the tiles in the bathroom.

Okay - Blocked toilet, not the end of the world. I grabbed the handy plunger and began to plunge, ignoring my wet socks (ew).

Then from the other end of the house:

"Aggh! There's poo coming out of the shower! Gross!"

I left wet sock footprints on the carpet between the two bathrooms.

And it was gross. A chocolaty brown ooze had emerged from the shower drain in the ensuite.

Gagging, I put the plunger over the drain, and plunged some more. A brown sea-spray of finely filtered family excrement shot all over me, and the shiny bathroom.

"Ew!" came the yell from the other, spouting toilet, "Now the Bathtub is full of poo!"

Oh man. This was not good. Every single facility for cleaning humans was overflowing with sewage, and I was covered in poo.

For the next three hours I worked with an auger and plunger, trying to clear the blockage to no avail. It's funny how, at first, I was all squeamish about the poo. After three hours, I'd kind of come to accept it as part of my life. Eventually, in desperation, and thoroughly soaked with poo, I opened a sewage access cover in the basement, and stuck my entire arm up the pipe.

I know. It's revolting. Just writing about it makes me gag. At the end of the disgusting tube I felt something soft and wet, like a giant spitball. With the carefree abandon of a man with his arm dangling in a septic tank, I firmly poked at the thing with my finger.

Well.

What happened next made all the disgusting things that had happened so far pale into insignificance. This gigantic brown fountain of human excrement poured out around my arm, and spouted about 4 feet into the air. It was like the Captain Cook Water Jet, (only brown and full of bits of poo and toilet paper). I desperately tried to replace the lid of the pipe cover, squirting the jet stream in five different horizontal directions across the basement. I fought the poo, with all the strength I had, and eventually, the torrent subsided enough to let me replace the access cover.

Successful, yet feeling defeated, and in no condition to go out in public, I slumped against the basement wall. From up above, I could hear my son's cheering:

"YAY! Daddy fixed it! Now can I have a wee?"

Perhaps today will be a better day...

Advertisers Beware..

2007-01-30T03:23:00.000+11:00

Your days are numbered.

Now that computers can automatically generate slogans, and pick up free imagery via tags from Flickr, there's a whole lot more pressure on you guys to actually do something REALLY impressive...

Check it out : The Ad Generator, at http://www.cogandsprocket.com/adgen/adgen.html

Lifehack:Ahoy, Me Hearties!

2007-01-21T10:05:00.000+11:00

As previously mentioned, I have something of a tendency to procrastinate.

I really hate that I do this. The absolute worst thing about procrastination is that there is no reward. It's kind of like you say "I'll show me! I just won't start anything until it is due..." And then you end up working like crazy at the last minute. Ha. Take that...

So, naturally, I'm always out to find a way to trick myself into more productivity.

My current tool this week is the Ship's Bell - based on the sailor's system of watches.

Once you learn to tell the time by counting the watches, it becomes a lot more apparent how much time you're wasting.

And just by associating the sound of the bells with the fact that you should be working, I've found myself focusing on single tasks for the whole 'watch' - often more.

If you'd like to try it out, you can download a little system utility for windows that will sound the bells for you from fredsplace.org.

Or you know, you can just do it later, if you want...

New URL

2007-01-21T08:58:00.000+11:00

Hey - this is neat - the new version of blogger supports custom domains - so this blog now lives at goodgord.com instead of goodgord.blogspot.com

(but old links will still redirect. So don't panic or anything.Phew!)

That's really nice of google to offer such a service, which I'm sure took them considerable effort to build, just so I can have eight less letters in my blog address...

What a Robot Really Wants

2007-01-19T09:01:00.000+11:00

Dean made an interesting point on the TOWER Blog today about the future of ECM, and its relationship to Knowledge Management.

Having the information at your disposal becomes a lot more valuable when you can use contextual information from other related content to analyse exactly what you have. It's just like Simon was saying about Pandora - real value comes from analysing multiple classification axes - not just one. As always, somewhere there's an academic at work on the problem - the article on Faceted Classification has some good starting points...

It reminded me of an article that I wrote for KMWorld, a publication that deals extensively with knowledge management, about robots, and how you need to empower decision makers with information.Funnily enough, when I tried to find my paper, there were a bunch of third party vendors who were charging money for me to read it. So I thought that I'd just post it here for free:

What a Robot Really wants…Knowledge at the point of decision
By Gordon Taylor, TOWER Software

A small, two legged robot stands atop a glass topped coffee table. On its two dimensional world, it has to contend with a pot plant, an old TV guide, and several coffee cups, along with the ever present danger of plummeting over the side towards the carpet below. As the robot navigates its way around, a constant evaluation process occurs inside its software ‘brain’. First, information is collected through its sensors. Secondly, that information is analyzed, using a decision tree to determine the optimal course of action.

What do the adventures of this robot have to do with knowledge management? It’s more important than you might think. You see, right before the robot takes its next step — once this simple two stage process is completed, the robot could be said to ‘know’ something. It’s collected all available information, and analyzed it. Knowledge is created through analysis of information.

So the effectiveness of our robot friend — or if you like, how ‘smart’ it is, depends directly on two things — the accuracy and relevance of the information supplied and the effectiveness of the evaluation process. Poor information, through faulty sensors or too few sensors, will result in an inaccurate picture being fed to the decision making processes. Poor analysis will lead to bad decisions, regardless of the quality of information supplied.

Now I’m sure you saw this analogy coming, but face it — your enterprise is exactly the same. To create a smart enterprise, you need to have a stable, reliable information base, and the analysis tools that allow you to create valuable knowledge — knowledge that fosters good decisions.

Information management has been refined over the years, to the point where most enterprise architects are including a central structured repository as part of their information architecture. ECM systems, built on solid data storage solutions, are the platforms that facilitate these sound information management policies.

At the heart of these information systems, is metadata — data stored about the data you store. By monitoring, storing, and indexing specific information about your business content, ECM vendors allow their customers the ability to easily find any piece of information, and its relevant business context, quickly and efficiently. These systems are built on information management policy and principles that have been around for a long time.

So, if your organization has a sound ECM policy and system in place, it’s not likely to fall off the coffee table because of poor quality information. The next generation of Enterprise systems will focus on how to manage the analysis of that information base to support your decision making process.

The DIKW Model is an information hierarchy that’s frequently cited when trying to address this problem. The model was originally recorded in a 1932 poem called The Rock from TS Eliot:

Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

In the modern, slightly less poignant implementation of the DIKW model, we find four layers:

Data
Information
Knowledge
Wisdom

Nowadays, thanks to advances in data storage, the science of information management, and the implementation of these systems in ECM products, the transition from data to information is largely a solved problem.

Getting from information to knowledge is much more difficult. Knowledge includes the ‘how’ aspect of a problem. Returning to our robot, it’s the analysis of the information that tells it ‘how’ to proceed.

Current efforts at solving this problem are varied, and you’ll probably recognize them as the more modern features provided by ECM vendors. Collaboration — allowing people to discuss and share information in order to facilitate progress. Workflow — prescriptive, best practice knowledge defined by a business process analyst is another attempt to provide ‘how’ information. Content Management tools, like Blogs and Wikis all provide additional published content around a topic — more published analysis to help people decide which step to take next.

Tools like these are striving to bridge the conceptual void between information and knowledge. While the jury is still out on how effective they are, the challenge is considerable. The next time you need to evaluate a system for inclusion in your Enterprise Architecture, consider how well it bridges this gap. Think like a robot. Do I have the right information available? Will this system enable me to make better decisions? Without a careful approach to both aspects, you could end up on the carpet.

My Friend said that you said...

2007-01-16T01:55:00.000+11:00

Big Headed Simon explains why he thinks that Pandora is better than Last.FM.

Oddly enough, This week, I too was thinking about Pandora, and what a good example it is of how taxonomy doesn't have to be boring. In fact, the article that I just wrote over on the TOWER Software Blog, explains it.

It's like we're spontaneously having a conversation about the same topic, on different sides of the planet by talking to different people...

The Internet is strange sometimes...

How to get your message across

2007-01-13T07:01:00.000+11:00

If you've ever wondered what the best way to present information for maximum impact, or if you've ever sat and stared at a blank Visio Canvas trying to figure out how to get your concept across, then this is for you.

The Periodic Table of Visualization Methods provides an interactive guide to all kinds of great ways to present information - from concepts and metaphors through to timelines and cluster diagrams.

How's that for inspiration? Neat...

iPhone

2007-01-11T10:35:00.000+11:00

Just in case you've been living on another planet, Apple announced the iPhone today.

I tried not to be impressed and excited, but I just couldn't help it. I want one. It's kind of interesting that the iPhone is still designed to be a two handed experience - one of the great things about RIM's Blackberry devices are that they can be operated with only one hand - at least for checking and reading mail. The iPhone looks to me like it might be a bit of a hassle to check your email while driving. (not that that's a good idea, or I EVER do it...)

And, in a nice piece of bleeding-obvious litigation, Cisco has already decided to sue over a trademark infringement.

Still, whatever you call it - it's surely a very lustworthy piece of tech-kit....

Cogito ergo non laboro

2007-01-07T08:09:00.000+11:00

I just noticed (after what looks like nearly 170 days) that Stephen's Blog is alive and functional. And to top it off, he's made his applescript application for handling TRIM Context reference files available to all and sundry.

If you're using the Mac with ICE, you really need to go and download this thing -it pretty much ensured that Stephen never had to leave his beloved iBook for that hateful windows machine!

Anyways, (a very belated) welcome :)

Humans Suck at Predicting the Future

2007-01-04T12:24:00.000+11:00

I really liked this post from Chris Fralic, which points us to all the awesome predictions of things that were supposed to happen in the Internet in 1995:

"Gopher. The lower-profile poor cousin from outta town, the media has been so absorbed in the publishing potential of Mosaic that it hasn't noticed the continued, and dramatic, growth of this easier-to-use; albeit less visually sexy; alternative. One key difference: I can always find what I want in Gopherspace with only a step or two."

Yeah - that Mosaic thing was really a flash in the pan... Still, one other prediction caught my eye:

"The first intelligent agent software packages will emerge, allowing Net users to ask for a specific piece of information like "What is the population of Fiji?" or "How far is Saturn from the Sun?" An agent will go out on the Net , find the information, and return it without the user knowing the source."

Hey! - I remember all that 'Agent ' talk - (wasn't that where Clippy came from?) But this question reminded me of something I found in HTTPSpace much more recently - Hakia.

Hakia claims to be a "meaning based" search engine, and you know it's not half bad. For instance, try the results to both of those far-off zany impossible questions:

You'll find the correct answers easily - first hit, first page. It's not perfect - but it certainly is intriguing. Mind you, Google does a better job than Hakia, no doubt - I don't even have to leave the search result page to get the answers....Truth be told, I don't know if I'd pick "Internet Search" for my first start-up venture...Having said that, I find myself constantly returning to it, which I guess is a sign that it must be kind of good.

It's no "Intelligent Agent", but I guess I've always got Search Dog for that...

Snap Happiness

2007-01-03T15:03:00.000+11:00

Some random shots taken over the holiday :)

if (Year++){do while brain != numb...};

2007-01-03T14:11:00.000+11:00

Happy New Year!

For my family back home in Congo, it's traditional to spend the New Year on the Beach. It usually rains a bit, but if you drink enough, nobody minds. And if you drink enough (like say - Fuzzy has been valiantly doing), then there's usually a midnight swim in the ocean, often complete with phosphorescent plankton that mirror the stars.

9903 miles away here in Virginia, things were a little different. But, not to be outdone, my excellent family and I headed for the sea anyway - to Ocean City, Maryland.

Of course, as Australia lives in the future, The New Year rolled around down under at about 8 AM New Years Eve, our time. I was a little late, but thanks to the awesome guys down at Malibu's Surf Shop, I managed to get all kitted out and ready to get into the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of winter:

The swell was small - maybe 2-3 feet. Feeling pretty gosh darn confident with all my fancy protection, I sauntered out into the water. Then I heard this strange noise as the first wave passed around shoulder height - it was kind of like the hollow sucking noise as the last of the bathtub water drains. Shortly after, I realised there was no more breathing for me. That weird sound? That was all my air spontaneously exiting my lungs.

Turns out that Northerly swell was mainly just made of melted icebergs.

I have never, ever experienced cold like that. My brain was throbbing with the worst ice cream headache I ever had. My fingers wouldn't bend, my lips went blue, and I acquired the ability to speak exclusively in profanities.

Then, almost magically, I found myself standing on the beach. I really don't remember leaving the water. Some primal protection reflex just marched me right out of there. And for a while, I seriously considered going back to the hotel for a hot shower. But no, I came here to surf, and I wasn't going to let the Atlantic ocean beat me. So, I gingerly went back in and managed to get in a decent hours worth of surfing. I also learned to be very, very careful about bailing on waves - the thought of putting my head back in the ocean was a far too intimidating prospect!

All in all, it was a pretty great experience - As crazy as it sounds, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. And I think I could maybe learn to deal with the cold. But I sure do miss the Pacific Ocean!

Two for the Heap

2006-12-29T00:05:00.000+11:00

Like Simon, I've always kept an eye on Shaun Inman's blog -or if not so much his content, on his designs. His concept of having old posts slowly disappear into nothingness is a really odd, and quite interesting idea. So yeah, another endorsement from me - but the fact that he's currently having a bunch of fun with his new Wii is also close to my heart - in fact, most of his posts kind of mirror what I've been doing since I started my holiday...Yay for Holidays!

No Wii for me today though. I need to go and camp out at the DMV, to obtain my Virginia drivers license - besides the fact that American cops tend to freak out when you show them an ACT drivers license, they charge you through the nose for insurance. (Not the cops, the insurance companies.)

I'm resolved to just live there for the whole day.

If you'd like to share, you can take some sample tests here. Then you could just stand in a queue for an hour or so. Then sit down and do nothing for an hour. Then try to explain to a stuffed animal why your birthday is written the wrong way around on your drivers license.... Then sit down and do nothing for another hour....*sigh*

Call it... Pointless.

Talking Bollocks

2006-12-23T03:33:00.000+11:00

Dear Lazyweb,

Is the word 'Bollocks' considered offensive?

I ask because I used it in a new upcoming post for the TOWER Software Blog, and I was wondering if maybe it might be deemed 'inappropriate'...

I used it because I think it's funny, but the extensive wikipedia entry on the word is just outright hilarious...
"In a technological context, the question could be 'Why has the web
developer included a three-minute animated intro to this page?', prompting
the answer: 'Dog's Bollock Syndrome, Mate. Because he can.'"

So long, SOAP

2006-12-20T04:58:00.000+11:00

Here's an interesting tie-in to the simplicity debate - Four years after the hype, Google has quietly axed the SOAP Web service API to it's search interface. (full story here) And nobody cares. Why?

The SOAP concept grew out of a great simple idea. The Idea was this:

"wouldn't it be nice to do RPC stuff via XML?

The first iteration of what would become SOAP was pretty straightforward - XMLRPC. Version 1.0 of SOAP built upon that, and was still human readable, and okay. Sometime after that, the big boys like Microsoft, IBM and Sun jumped on board, and proceeded to complexify, 'standardize' and completely bugger the specification about until the final modern iteration of SOAP was so confusing, that only the most zeal-ridden platform zealots were singing it's praises - and even they didn't actually know how the thing worked anymore.

Marketing execs all over the world were so desperate for 'Web Services' that they confused them with 'Web Sites', 'Web Parts', and 'Windows Services'. The only thing spreading faster than misinformation was glossy brochures. The whole thing was deranged.

The original, simple idea was lost in a maelstrom of add-ons and transactional plug-ins and security goo and it all became horrible. Actively trying to build a solution architecture on top of this thing is something that no self-respecting architect would do. Instead, the developer world has slowly gotten over this mondo corporate brainwashing, turned back to the more sensible ideas - REST based XML web services - where you ask a question and get an answer using a URL (kind of like...the Internet!)

I think that today marks the beginning of the end of the end for SOAP, now that the Google SOAP API is finished (not that many folk were using it, anyway...) Whatever good ideas SOAP held at the beginning have been totally wrecked. I mean, the S in SOAP used to stand for SIMPLE. When they stopped using the acronym and tried to make out that it was 'just a name', alarm bells should have gone off all over the world...

Can we all just put it behind us and move on now?

What's an OGG?

2006-12-18T03:47:00.000+11:00

If you've ever run across an OGG file, chances are you've probably gone - "What on earth is that?" And then you'd find out that it was an open source, slightly superior music compression format that tends to be used by the more 1337 amongst us. Then, you might have wondered how you could listen to something that had been encoded with it.

Well, if you wanted to use iTunes, you were previously out of luck - or so I thought, until I found the Xiph.org quicktime plugin. This has been around for a while, but now it seems to work great.

Now that's commitment.

2006-12-14T05:08:00.000+11:00

I can remember 'certain' students used to find a modicum of ribald hilarity in scrawling the traditional 'dick and balls' on a plastic high school chair, but these kids have completely taken it to a new level.

Tsk, Tsk - Busted by Google Earth - the shame...

(The Google Maps link.)

My new favourite movie

2006-12-12T14:01:00.000+11:00

Nearly 100 percent of the time, Cable TV in America dishes up the most inane garbage, very rarely worthy of any comment. And yet, sometimes... well, suffice to say that thanks to Encore, I now have a new favourite movie - North Shore, from 1987. How can this be so? Well, because of the following:

Awesome Surf Footage,
A ridiculous cheesy plot line about a surfer from Arizona (yes, Arizona) who wins a surfing contest in a wave pool, and then decides to go to O'ahu to surf the Pipeline Classic.
Cheesy eighties music soundtrack, that includes Journey and Pseudo Echo,
Awesome Surf Footage,
A truly terrible love story straight out of a Sweet Valley High book.
Lots of gratuitous shots of chicks lying on the beach in ugly eighties bikinis,
A bunch of 'Bad Ass' Hawaiian locals,
Actual cameos from amazing real life surfers like Mark Occhilupo, Laird Hamilton and Gerry Lopez; and
Awesome Surf Footage.

I mean, really, could there possibly be anything more you could need in a movie?

I don't think there is...

Dante Says...

2006-12-11T11:12:00.000+11:00

This is just a reminder to make sure you keep up to date with Harsher Light - Little Headed Simon's tale of a skilled Gothic hero just keeps getting more and more intriguing.

Who is this guy? What are these terrifying sexy angels that are trying to kill people? Can you really use crushed aspirin and smoke to detect evil spirits? Some of these questions may be answered, but you'll have to keep your browser (or your RSS Reader) tuned to http://harsherlight.blogspot.com/.

New York City

2006-12-07T15:16:00.000+11:00

I was, I admit, a little ambivalent about making the trip up from DC to New York City. My wife, Ali, was extremely envious of the idea. But, (as a good husband so often finds) , It turns out she was right.

New York is an extremely inspiring place. It's like a thousand ideas colliding all at once.
Everywhere I walked, I was mindful of New York stuff,( even though I grew up about as far away as you can get -in Australia ) - things like the 59th Street Bridge, Madison Square Gardens, 42nd Street, Times Square - Lyrics from the Beastie Boys, those dumpsters from Law and Order episodes, Ben Lee and Grandmaster Flash, and the art-deco style uber buildings that define the megalopolis.

Times Square was particularly amazing at night - If you don't pay attention to where you're going, You'll almost certainly be run over by a cab - but if you don't, you'll probably accidentally buy something - the neon assault of advertisements is a wonder to behold. I didn't get to see the stility building of doom though. Maybe next time...

Seems that if New York wants to make a point, there won't be any mis-interpreting it. It will be writ really large. It's an amazing place to visit. I gotta come back sometime to play, when there's less work on the table...

I need your permission to continue.

2006-12-05T12:46:00.000+11:00

I've spent a few days now with Windows Vista (Ultimate). It is the ultimate many things, but I sure hope that it's not the ultimate operating system. In a way it seems to me that Vista is sort of like a really shallow, hot girlfriend - You have to pay her lots of attention, work hard constantly to keep her happy and in return, she looks gorgeous and drives you absolutely insane with her stupidity and nagging...

I'm talking particularly about User Account Control. This one single 'feature' has the potential to make people throw their machines across the room in all their shiny transparent aero glory. Essentially, the way it works is this: anytime you do anything that could possibly affect the configuration of your computer, Windows prompts you to enter your username and password again, to confirm that you really meant for the action to occur.

This may seem like a cool idea. I understand the point. The theory goes that no nasty virus or spyware will ever be able to do anything mean or nasty, without the user knowing. But, it seems to me, that in this case, as in many things, that Microsoft's heart is bigger than it's brain...

Things that trigger a UAC event include: installing software, re-configuring software, starting a program, saving files (to certain locations), connecting anything to the Internet, starting a windows service, opening a management console, renaming certain files - In short, pretty much everything.

You know, configuring my new OS today(as a local administrator), I think I must have typed my username and password over one hundred times. If a malicious or evil program had somehow been one of those 100 times, would I have typed it in? Chances are, I probably would have. Hell, after about the first 5 UAC events, I was ready to give my username and password to any stupid dialog that popped up and asked. I mean, occasionally I found myself just typing it randomly into e-mails, out of habit...

It reminds me of a story Paula was telling about an organization making a password policy so complex, that users were forced to write passwords down on sticky notes and stick them to their monitors. It devalues the whole thing. My password has been commoditized. It's nearly worthless to me.

So, UAC doesn't solve the problem that it was built to solve - it actually makes it worse. If users aren't prepared to get a whole lot looser with their passwords, then they won't be able to install anything, or make windows perform properly. Either way, it will drive users around the twist. (There were some really choice swear-words coming out of my cube today. )

Sure, you can turn UAC off. But in what may be the 'ultimate' irony, if you do, Windows helpfully nags you constantly to turn it back on!

Zero is a number...

2006-11-29T08:42:00.000+11:00

Wow. It's really really cold here in Newfoundland. And by really cold, I mean really, really cold. The forecast low today was zero, and the forecast high was 1.

Now normally, when the weather man is off by a degree or so, nobody really minds. But when it was the only degree we were going to get, I must admit I felt a bit jilted. In the end, the high (and the low!) today turned out to be just zero. There are flurries of snow blowing around, and it gets dark at half past four in the afternoon. My poor bald head is glowing red - I know, bring a hat.. Noted.

Meanwhile, my anti-colleague, Simon (I do actually have some friends who aren't called Simon) , just rang me from Miami, where it was 28 degrees Celsius, and he was watching the sun set from his air-conditioned hotel. Nice...

We Gotta Wii!

2006-11-20T09:48:00.000+11:00

Well, after a bunch of sleeping on the sidewalk in subzero temperatures, we finally managed to secure a Wii.

Sleeping outside of a department store has never been on my list of things I wanted to achieve, and I don't think I would recommend it to anyone I liked.

But, (and I'm sticking to my story) - I never really planned to sleep outside. Patrick and I drove down to our local Wal*Mart to try and persuade them to sell us one at midnight, to save my other plan of getting up at 6am and trying to find a console. Of course, when we arrived at Fair Lakes Mall, there were people camping out all over the place, at 11:30. The Wal*Mart guy laughed at us, and said - "Maybe if you arrived here at 8 this morning, like the guys out the front!" So, we unwittingly found ourselves in the line outside of Target.

"Hang on", I Thought. "This isn't the kind of line that moves. We will be here all night..." But by then, four other people had already sat down behind us...

Resigned to our fate, and unwilling to entertain the concept that we might not get one, we bought some 8 dollar sleeping bags from Wal Mart just before it shut, and pulled the back seats out of the car, and settled down into what may have been the worst night's sleep I've ever had.

Patrick was out like a light - I didn't hear from him until about 6am, when they handed us all tickets that ensured we would get a system. All around us, nerds talked nerd talk about video games, and programming, and other tech stuff until the wee small hours. There was a particularly enthusiastic game of Risk going on behind me until about 5:00 ('You pesky fricking Mongolians!..')

But by 8:30 Sunday Morning , we managed to secure ourselves a family Wii, together with an extra controller and The Legend of Zelda:Twilight Princess.

Since then, there have been some pretty exciting games of Wii Tennis and Wii Bowling among our little family of Miis. The new generation of gaming has begun, and I'll save my impressions of the system for later.

Right now - I niid some sliip!

We wanna Wii wanna Wii...

2006-11-19T17:29:00.000+11:00

It's extremely cold. I feel like I've reached a new level of fanboydom. I'm sitting outside target at 1am, with my son, rugged up in sleeping bags, waiting for the Nintendo Wii, which is released tomorrow morning. At our last count, Pat and I were the 51st people in the line, for the alleged 80 Wii consoles. Blogging via Blackberry hurts my thumbs, so I'll post the outcome later...

The Vista from here...

2006-11-17T14:33:00.000+11:00

Okay, so I'm not exactly immune to picking on Windows vista...

But - I just installed the Release Candidate 2, and I have to say - I'm impressed.

The installation process was so smooth and so easy - it only asked me two questions -

what time zone are you in?, and;

what desktop background would you like?

These are easy questions. I like them. So far... so good...

On the pursuit of the approval of strangers

2006-11-15T05:52:00.000+11:00

Sometimes I wonder which is the more noble pursuit:

Providing structured social commentary on the complex artifacts of the human society we live in, This includes things like keeping abreast of new technologies, discussing long-winded and entirely artificial constructs like records management, or:

Reporting the simple delights of nature. The things that make me smile, that ring with all of us. The underlying humanist principles that don't need to be hugely detailed, or have whole industries built around them, because they are so built into us all that we appreciate them anyway.

I've lost some of the piqueness I had when I set out to write this post, because I have spent the last few hours in a crowded bar in Dallas Airport, watching commercials(in between a game of American Football). Inspired by Wordsworth, and his boundless enthusiasm for the natural world, I idly both wandered and wondered the terminal, which is absolutely massive, and could almost be seen as a monument to the more contrived human behaviours, and yet - I found natural behaviour everywhere.

From the children, wide-eyed and enraptured at giant sundaes, to the young air hostesses, intently discussing their potential boyfriends in between flights. (I imagined two cave dwelling girls, 10,000 years ago, discussing their nuptial relationships with each other away from the campfire.) The struggling and almost certainly unnoticed triumphantly pathetic blooms of the shiny indoor plants. Family Reunions. Grandparents chasing grand-toddlers into amused strangers...

These things that are innate and understandable hold tremendous appeal and romantic lore, and yet the contrived complexities that human society creates also amaze and astound me. In a way, it was the difference between these two things that brought me to America. I know for a fact that I hold a deep and revered solace with human nature and the natural world. And yet, America is the home of every contrived complexity ever known to man. It is a shrine to human progress, and invention, to capitalism and progressive commerce. Whatever unnatural pursuit that ever there be, for sure you can find it here, celebrated.

And perhaps that is where I love and hate advertising. Right at that nexus where the commercial world tries to tap into human nature in order to generate more profit. Advertising, and marketing in general suffers from a near impossible challenge - the ability to manipulate the innate natural-ness of all people, without appearing disingenuous. And you can't fake human nature - it's implicit in every human. Your audience will always know.

And as I've looked in turn at each shiny fluorescent billboard, the underlying attempt to pull at the heartstrings of the intended viewer seems so transparent - all coming down to simple, basic human emotions - sex, comfort, food, and overwhelmingly, the approval of strangers.

So much advertising is trying to make people feel inadequate and sad. That you won't be a good person unless you buy this brand of speakers, or this brand of face cream. That you need an enormous house in order to impress people you do not know or care about the opinion of.

And for all our ingenious inventions and boundless talents with resources, it all seems a little shallow from my late night viewpoint here on a hard plastic airport chair. To have replaced our innate natural desires with fluorescent advertisements, Shopping Magazines, invoices and Profit and Loss statements seems profoundly hollow.

Busted...

2006-11-11T12:23:00.000+11:00

You know, you have to keep a constant watch on the sneaky blogosphere.

Sometimes your friends will just start blogging - without even telling you!

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to find them. Technorati knows all (well, some stuff anyway...)

Take that, Big Headed Simon! Subscribed :)

(You know, six of the top eight hits on google for the phrase "Big Headed Simon" are actually about Big Headed Simon. I think he is the only one in the whole world!)

Join the Conversation!

2006-11-10T04:05:00.000+11:00

I'm proud to announce that TOWER Software (my employer) has recently unveiled it's new blog ( the RSS feed is here.)

The plan is for TOWER to share some of it's insights and experiences developing TRIM Context, and solving Enterprise Content Management problems from around the world.

I know, most of you are probably thinking.."that sounds really, really boring!", but hey - it's my life! You should check out some of the posts before you jump to any premature conclusions - I certainly plan to contribute a post or two, and feel free to drop by and leave a comment.

The web is a two way medium, after all :)