TG’s WEBlog (Known
as a BLOG or Blogging)
Wanna discuss the
WEBlog content? Email TGtips@topica.com
or link to TGtips Discussion Place
for an open discussion group.
January
Blogs: Actions Speak
Louder than Words, Wordy Bullshit, Branding, Links Today, TV Heaven, Enemies
Bring Gifts, Debate on Dave Weinberger’s New Book, Change Now, Rant, What I did
on my Holidays, Fame and Immortality (Me and Bill Gates),e-business failures,
Parallels with my Father, Micropayments-The Future of the Internet, My First
Day at School, Football Memories and a Chance in Life, Rivers Link People,
Links, Design and Creativity, The Other Faces, 7UP, What is Voice?-Vision and
Action, Writing in Progress, Latest Virus Alerts, When is a Weblog a Weblog,
Hello 2002, Happy New Year, 2002 New Year’s Resolutions.
February
Blogs: Spike Milligan Dies, Camp It Up!, Cluetrain Savaged
(and the Nevilles), Goods Luck Elliot!, Monkey Brains, Busy and Thanks,
MindMaps and Walter Winterbottom, Radio 8 Blog and Micropayments, Morning
Pages, Women!, Jackson Browne Lyrics – Lives in the Balance, Let
the Consumer and Employee Revolution Begin, Life and Death, Corporate Rant,
Wilful Georgia!, Celebrity Blogs, United Internet, Friends Reunited at Work,
Immunisation?, Good Business Leadership, No Logo, Definitely No Logo, Missing
in Action, Paolo Di Canio.
March Blogs: Words Fail Me,
Losing My Religion, Bush Fire?, Fucking Telstra, Redflagsweekly, The Best
Companies to Work For?, Good to Be Back, Write On – Cling Sheets, Georgia,
Redundancy, Am I a Loser?, Google Image Searches, Sporting DNA, Corporate DNA,
My World has Changed, Internet Laugh, No Logo, Political Compass, Fark, Sex Sells,
Tourette Syndrome Barbie, Trailer Park (Trash?), Gauss Rifle, Bruce
Sterling, Deep Links and Google Scientology, Jimmy
Hill I love you because…,
April Blogs : Doctors-My Arse,
My Website Stats, FriendsReunited and Demography of Networks, Other People,
Today, Missing Days, Nothing Today, Aussie Humour, Come on England, Ethics,
Quality of Life, United Reject, I’m Tired, Israel, Vaccines, Computer
Addiction, Self Adjusting Networks, Website Redesign, My Website is Back,
Apologies for Telstra, Andrew Sullivan, Zipf’s Law, Fucking Telstra yet again,
Still a Snowboard Addict, and Logos, Redflagsweekly Again and The Queen Mum’s
Funeral, Game Addiction, Gravity and Science, Maglev and Political Power, Fark
Links, Lost Keys and High Hopes, Scientific Research Stinks, Big Companies,
Dangers of DHMO.
May Blogs: Georgia not sleeping, Georgia
not well, Sydney, QANTAS, Dave Portnoy – Friendsreunited, PC Cleanup, Cooking
Food is Killing Us, Printers and Designers, Telstra Update, Stupid White Men,
Fixit and Hoaxes, Website Nightmare, Blogging Time, ICL and British Invention,
Wedding Photos, Stressful Day, Good to be Back,
Crawling Daughter, Blue Peter, Anti-Gravity, Mothers
Day, Sven’s England Team, Man Yoo Mourning, Nothing and Tom Peters!, Telstra
yet Again and Broadband, Crawling!, Perth, Barbara Castle and Sliding Doors,
Enzymes.
June Blogs: Brazil, Tim Henman’s Serve,
David O’Leary sacking, Wheels come off WorldCom, Brazil beat Turkey, A Deeply
Frustrating Day, Sick, England Keep Falling Over, Oh No, England 1 Brazil 2,
America and Anthrax, Korea!, More USA and Football, Brazil here we come!, 3-0
to The Inger-land, England v Denmark, Dell, C’mon Inger-land, And just to prove
what crap Americans write, Isolation of the USA, Limitations of the Internet,
England, More Canberra Rex, Defer to your experts on the frontline, IBM PC
Visionary, Canberra Rex Hotel, Canberra, More Dyslexia, Dyslexia.
July Blogs: Laptop Troubles, Sense
of Direction, Rio, Miracles
of the Mind, Sick and Tired, Lack of Fame – Janis Ian, Fame, I want to live forever! Rod
Steiger, Brisbane, Born
in the USA.
Friday 26th July 2002
Been
very busy this week, so I’ve slipped up a bit on my writing.
Also,
having trouble getting access on a phone line to download.
My
laptop is trying to tell me it wants replacing.
On
top of the problems of being on Windows 95 without a software disc, as well as
having lots of other software without the discs, and a C: drive that keeps
filling up rapidly, the last straw seems to be the thing that give the screen
its “stiffy”.
You
know, the thing that keeps the screen open and stiff.
It’s
gone totally, so either the screen flops totally open, or flops totally shut.
No
screen erection whatsoever. I’m sure
this won’t be the first time a laptop screen has gone floppy, and there must be
a replacement part, but on a 3-year-old laptop, is it worth finding it.
On
the other hand, I am really experiencing $4500 worth of pain to consider a
replacement laptop fully speced.
It’s
not as though it’s the processor that needs replacing. I’m perfectly happy with the Pentium II
processor, as long as I have enough memory, which I do, and I could do with a
bigger disc.
I
guess recently, where I’ve speculated and splashed out, I’ve accumulated and
even more work has come my way.
So
I’d better start looking.
Either
I’m losing my sense of direction or I’m upside down.
Driving
through Perth yesterday, I realise I have no sense of where the hell I am.
When
I was younger, I had a much better sense of direction, and more interest in
finding my bearings.
Nowadays,
I get from A to B and hope and pray, especially that I can get back from B to
A. My memory for names had always been
lousy, but I think it’s been further compounded by this upside down thing.
Being
down under. Not being upside down, but
getting used to the sun being in the Northern sky. It makes a big difference you know, to be able to immediately
know where South is. Here in Australia,
when I need to make a split second decision on direction, I get confused.
That,
or I’m getting old!!
This
is driving me mad. I have no access in
the apartment to my ISP dial up. It
doesn’t seem to work, so I have little incentive to write. Also, my laptop screen losing its stiffness,
doesn’t help. I seem to be losing most
of July to this lack of access and lack of organisation on my laptop. Today was recovery day from training solidly
for 4 days over the weekend with back to back courses. My friend Caroline has had her baby. Grace.
Fantastic. Must call her soon.
Man
Utd signing Rio eh? Good move, but to
put so much in one player who may get injured is risking a lot. And besides, I don’t think the problem lies in
the middle of defence. Better
full-backs, cover and replacement for Keane, although Butt has come of
age. But if Van Nistelrooy gets injured
we’re really stuffed, because we don’t have an attacker who can hold the ball
up, since we sold Cole. That is not a
good situation for a top team to be in, and I don’t see where we’re going to
get an attacker from. Relying on Van
Nistelrooy to not get injured and maintain his form is asking an awful lot. Does getting rid of Yorke just finance
Ferdinand or does it lead to Duff or another player coming in? I hope so but I guess not.
Sunday 14th July 2002
So I’m half asleep this
morning, having gone back to bed with my cold.
And suddenly it comes to me,
I don’t know how. Tony Selby.
That’s the guy who was in the
Special Branch episode with George Sewell.
With that knowledge, the
sitcom Tony Selby was in was “Get Some In”.
Finally got most of the
website working again. Just one page of
photos to ponder about.
It’s so slow though. I’m sure it’s the crappy webserver.
I reckon now it should be
easy to move to a good webserver now.
Saturday 13th July 2002
I have streaming cold today,
so I’ve not been feeling well.
Watching the telly for most
of the day which I rarely do nowadays.
“Special Branch” with George
Sewell. There’s a guy in it today who
was in a 70s sitcom, Tony somebody.
RAF, he was the sergeant
bossing them around. I just can’t find
it on the internet, it’s driving me mad.
Also, I’ve tried so hard to
get my website up and fully running.
It’s driving me mad.
I now have double the
webspace, but appear to have half the speed.
I don’t know if this is
because the server is in America and not Australia.
I think it’s just a slow
server.
Also, the server doesn’t
recognise upper case letters in the filenames and links.
So I’ve had to not only
change all the filenames, but also the links in each page.
It must be over 400
changes. I do that, get most of it
working, and now it won’t load some of my photo thumbs.
The links to the big photos
are ok but some, and only some of the thumbs won’t load.
Holy shit, I though
The support consists of
sending them an email with no guarantee of when there will be a response.
I suppose you get what you
pay, and now I have to consider using another webserver.
Damn.
And why do the defaults on
Word2002 keep changing? It keeps
changing to English USA for the spellchecker, and suddenly it’s inserting
bloody SmartTags which get coded into HTML.
Shit.
Friday 12th July 2002
Found a link to Janis Ian’s
website (She sang Seventeen) for her writing on The Internet Debacle on digital licensing and performer rights.
Very eloquent.
But better still is this one Janis
Ian's Monumental Mistakes It’s
hilarious and kind of a lesson in life.
“That way, next time you make one
of your own, you can read mine and take heart. After all, as stupid as they
were, I'm still here - still writing, still recording, still performing, still
able to earn a living in music after 33 years on the job. It could be worse.
|
1. |
The scenario: |
An office at The William
Morris Agency, circa 1967. |
|
|
The players: |
Myself, my former manager,
and my agents David Geffen and Hal Ray. |
|
|
My situation: |
Society's Child, written and sung by me,
is top ten on the Billboard Chart; my album is also top ten. I'm fifteen
years old. |
|
|
The issue at hand: |
Whether to accept a three-month
project scoring an as-yet-unnamed film for very little money. |
|
|
The discussion: |
"This film stars
some short, big-nosed unknown with bad hair; it's got an untried director as
well. The story line is silly - Up With People guy graduates, has an affair
with his mother's close friend and neighbour, falls in love with her
daughter, and runs away with her on a bus after breaking into the church
where her wedding's being held." |
|
|
The decision: |
Pass. Doesn't sound like
a winner. |
|
|
The result: |
The Graduate comes out and breaks all
box office records. I, in the meanwhile, go off to Spain and score a film
called Four Rode Out, which
is occasionally shown on late-night Turkish television. |
|
|
The consequences: |
Paul Simon goes on to win
a multitude of Grammys for his work. I win a multitude of nominations for my
work. |
|
|
What I'd do now: |
Insist on seeing a rough
cut of the film, ignore my agents and manager, and take the project precisely
because it was so full of unknowns. |
|
|
My current take: |
Maybe I could have
written Bridge Over Troubled Water,
but it's doubtful.” |
And there’s ten more where
that came from of equal gobsmackingness!!
Thursday 11th July 2002
Been struggling to write
daily.
I’ve got so much on, plus my
technology is creaking. My laptop isn’t
linked to my PC so currently I’m transferring small files by floppy disc.
Secondly, my website has
350Kb of space left on it which is hardly an incentive to write or take photos.
I have to spend a day getting
the new webserver cleaned up with the links. I haven’t had time to do that.
Found two great links
yesterday.
Rod Steiger died this
week. So what? Well there’s a parlour game known as 6 degrees
of Kevin Bacon.
Pick an actor and see how few
steps you can link an actor from the films they’ve been in with other actors,
to Kevin Bacon.
The thing is Kevin Bacon if
far from being the best linked actor.
In other words the shortest
average number of steps to any other actor.
That accolade surprisingly
belonged to Rod Steiger.
So I searched for the
database and found a treasure chest.
UVA Computer Science:
The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia
This is the reseach project
which has linked every actor to every other actor alive or passed over to the
other side as John Edward would say!
It uses The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). which in itself is
fascinating because it carries the information of every actor, ever!
But back at the Oracle of
Bacon, they’ve come up with 1000
best connected actors, and Rod Steiger has lost his place to ….
Christopher Lee. I love the maths of it because there’s two
ways to be right up there.
Either act with the most
actors and hence give yourself lots of short steps to every other actor, or act
with the best connected actors.
You can also link
any actor with any other actor and check the shortest number of steps.
It’s fascinating to have a
look at the 1000 list and see who’s in the top 20 and who’se way down.
You’d be amazed.
And the two top connected
actresses? Go check it out.
Monday 8th July 2002
In Brisbane for 2 days, training.
Pleasant
city, set on the river and not the coast, to my surprise.
Good
weather considering it’s winter, and unlike Melbourne!
Just
so busy and haven’t written my stuff for a few days.
Also,
the technology is beginning to creak.
My
laptop in on Windows 95.
I
have a legitimate ’98 disc but it’s not an upgrade disc, so when I try to load it,
it’s not built to upgrade from ’95.
I
risk losing all my data and applications if I put a new operating system on.
The
laptop is fine, it’s a Pentium II with 196MB of memory which if perfectly good
enough.
It
does only have a 4 GB disc which is proving a bit cumbersome.
I
also have wiped out the printer port, and the briefcase folder keeps locking.
I
want to clean all this up, have my laptop on at least Windows ’98 so the USB
port works properly and I can link my PC with my laptop more easily.
I
just can’t find an easy way to do it.
It’s
crazy but it’s almost better to buy a new laptop with Microsoft office for
$4500.
Do
I pay that amount of money or do I put up with $4500 worth of hassle?
Mind
you, I bet for significantly less than that I could find a good technical
person to sort my laptop out and link it to my PC.
Thursday 4th July 2002
It’s the 4th of
July, and I’ve recently been developing my theory on Americans.
I don’t want to be rude about
them because after all this is their day, and they will be reading this!
How can I put this?
Most Americans seem to have
the brain of an Ant!!!
But that works in their
favour.
They are the world force they
are because they act like ants.
They collaborate and network.
Failure is acceptable.
So what if a few ants are
squished for the good of the colony.
So what if a few ants stray
too far a field looking for new sources of food.
And the more I develop this
ant theory of Americans the more it seems to fit.
And come to think of it there
are a few recent books on ant networks.
Americans are great with
content. Great films (some bad ones as
well!), great sitcoms, great feats of science and production.
How can this be?
Ants.
They come up with a single
idea, a one trick pony.
And they give it to the ant
colony to develop.
Using sitcoms as an
example. They come up with one line and
20 ants develop it into a joke, which is then researched with the audience
until it’s funny.
Compare this with a single
Brit who locks himself in a room for 6 months and comes up with Fawlty Towers.
It’s the same with say
training material. I couldn’t work out
how they manage to write so many books and develop so many PowerPoint slides.
They collaborate. One Ant comes up with a single idea like
“Cover all your bases”.
And the other Ants go off and
develop this idea into a book and spin-offs, just based on one idea.
They’re unstoppable these
Ants.
Happy July 4th
United States of Ants.