Author: richard

Some of my non-Twitter friends are incredulous at my use of Twitter. I thought I’d better explain.

I don’t think Twitter is anything like blogging (or microblogging). I don’t think of it as IM, although you sometimes get into IM-ish exchanges. What does it do?

Well, there have been a couple of interesting spontaneous group pub trips, although how spontaneous I don’t know because people go to the pub on a Friday night anyway. What I have found is that I’ve got a sense of getting to know people—people who I meet from time to time anyway but don’t normally get any kind of extended involvement with (weak ties, Tipping Point fans). And I’m enjoying that a great deal. This familiarization is almost certainly an illusion to some degree, because meatspace is so important for really getting to know someone. Perhaps it’s just another social lubrication. Like beer.

When I was in the US a few weeks back, I took my laptop and as a result managed to mostly avoid watching US TV. What I found myself doing was watching a bunch of video podcasts that I had somehow accumulated. Things like Mobuzz, Snowfix and the currently off-form Tikibar TV, etc etc etc. Although I’ve been subscribed to a bunch of these for a while, what’s creeped up on me is the quality: they’re really good! (I shouldn’t be so surprised). And there’s lots of them.

So when people talk about the nature of TV changing, I’m starting to think they might be right.

The MOO people put on a great party. So, happy 1st birthday to them. Great location, great bar, great deco, great people… yay. I have more photos but you really want to see the photos everyone else took, which were much better.

I’m back in San Francisco for the JavaOne conference. I think it’s either the 4th or 5th visit to the city. The trip over is something like 10 or 11 hours, and I don’t have a great time on such long flights. Towards the end I was wondering why I put myself through this, but then I snapped out of it and realized what a very lucky boy am I to have the opportunity to go fun places. It’s just a pisser being away from Jane for a week.

Ever since I left the house I’ve had a nagging “I’ve forgotten something” feeling. Somewhere above Canada I realized that it was the snowboards. All the other flights I’ve been on recently have been to snowy places, lugging lots of kit around and it just seems weird to land in a city and not immediately head towards a mountain.

The conference starts tomorrow, so today covered all the usual things such as saying “my body doesn’t work” or “I don’t remember San Fran being this warm” and trying to figure out when to eat and drink to try to flip into the time zone as fast as possible. We’ll be just about right by the time we fly back out.

We’ve picked up all the registration stuff, and had a bit of time shopping. Looking at lobsters (fun), checking out the Sony Reader (impressive screen, but unusable device), wondering who, exactly, needed shark cartilage as a dietary supplement (answer: nobody), and being overly happy about ordering noodles and being given 42 as our order number.

It may be fake, but this weekend The Guardian printed
an article on global warming (Sat 4 April, p. 26) which I like very much. Of course, liking it doesn’t make it right….

The gist of the article is this: there’s a lot of worry about global warming, and the cause, but “Earth’s resources are finite; the planet is doomed to die […] and the solution is clear: we must seek other planets to colonise. Earth may be good for 10,000 years or so; then it will be time to find a new home, or homes—a literal New World.”

Original? No. I first heard this from the mouth of Bart Simpson: ” Aw, recycling’s useless Lis. Once the Sun burns out, this planet is doomed. You’re just making sure we spend our last days using inferior products.”

Anyway, the thing about new worlds that troubles me is this: pretty much any planet that’s habitable is going to be inhabited, because life’s like that. So any new world we colonize is going to be one of those SF moves here the aliens come to take over the Earth, except, we’re the bad aliens. More funding for terraforming, I say.

Here’s an example of why I like the writing in 2600 magazine: “We all love 2600 for its highfalutin articles on port knocking, Caller ID spoofing, Walmart self-checkout hacks, etc., but sometimes we lose sight of the obvious stuff. Sooner or later, the North Koreans or Iranians are going to bomb us. When that happens, how are you going to pay for doughnuts and beer from the 7-11?” (from the Winter 2007 issue, which goes on to describe how to hide things inside a cut out book).