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 so far: 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 Peter!, Telstra yet Again and Broadband, Crawling!, Perth, Barbara Castle and Sliding Doors, Enzymes.
Saturday 18th May
2002
Blogging takes time.
It takes a disproportionate amount of time to Blog and write this and my
other bits of writing.
Don’t believe it that all Bloggers can knock the thing out in 15 mins.
Firstly, if you have links in your Weblog then you have to surf to have
something interesting to write about, and you have to paste the links in and
either access your Weblog or upload it once it’s written.
You have to proof it and spell check it, and put the links in it. This all takes time.
On a good day I can knock out all 4 of my pieces of writing in 30 mins.
But mostly it take longer, sometimes dragging on for hours or sitting in
the background of the rest of the things I’m doing in a day.
In fact the biggest drain on energy is thinking of what I’m going to
write about today.
It’s always a welcome relief to think of 2 subjects and have one for the
following day, so that when I come to write it, the idea is already there.
I’m really enjoying all this writing, but it takes up time and is
currently reducing the amount of time I’m spending reading other people’s
writing.
One thing I did do today is spend some time with Georgia, and at the
same time, take some time out.
She woke from her morning sleep after only 45mins. So I was going to get her up and dressed.
But I sensed she may still be tired.
So I sat down on the rocking chair and rocked her back to sleep on my
chest and then just had a think about things.
Time Out.
In fact, just taking that time out for an hour, helped me come up with
lost of writing ideas and actually saved me time today.
I couldn’t believe I sat rocking her for over an hour.
Friday 17th May
2002
At the beginning of April the ICL name ceased to exist.
ICL is owned by Fujitsu and it has been decided to use the Fujitsu brand
worldwide.
I worked for ICL for many years, the pillar of British I.T, formed out
of the pioneering work during WWII and the post war growth in computing, and
the bringing together in the 60s of several disparate UK computing companies by
Tony Benn in the
“White Heat of Technology”.
The reasons I’m writing this is because around 20 years ago, when I
first joined ICL, I worked on the launch of their latest mainframe the Series
39.
The technology included in this hardware was Macrolan; optical fibre
connection of the processor to the discs and other peripherals.
Nowadays I keep reading about this new invention of fibre connected
processors and storage devices like it’s some kind major new thing, and yet I
know that it’s been around and fully operational for at least 20 years.
It reminds me yet again of the difference between good invention and
commercial success. A big gap that so
often the Brits don’t bridge. They
invent and invent and invent in isolation, but don’t commercially grow it. They don’t collaborate well and don’t network
well. It’s interesting reading the Tony
Benn biography link above, that he pushed the development of Concorde through
collaboration with the French. But then
again, Concorde hasn’t been a huge commercial success, even though it’s a
fantastic technological success.
I was talking to a colleague who’s mother has some contacts here in
Australia, but she won’t let me use her name to contact them.
Typically British. It’s not
cricket to contact people through who you know.
It’s cheating. It’s dirty.
We’re human beings. How on earth
do many of the Brits think we advanced from being apes.
Even the apes that support Millwall
achieve their notoriety through collaboration!
Thursday 16th May
2002
We finally ordered our wedding photos today, 18 months and 1 daughter
after we got married!
We’re far from the longest to get back to him, and he said that 10% of
people never order photos beyond the proofs he gives them to choose from.
Going back to the UK after the wedding, and then moving here and Annie
being pregnant and then having Georgia, somehow put the photos to the back of
the queue.
We chose the photos today and went to see the photographer.
Elio the photographer is great.
We got on well with him at the wedding, and today.
We both make each other’s lives easy.
We chose, he advised, he suggested the layout and we agree. Easy.
It costs a fair bit though!
He’s a good networker as well, giving me a name of someone he knows, to
contact about my work.
Cool!
Bad service yesterday, and great service today.
We pay lots, he delivers, we’re happy, he’s happy.
Wednesday 15th May
2002
Just had a stressful day today.
Nothing big, just lots of niggley things all piled up.
My friends Telstra! I received a
call last night from their support desk leaving me a message to check if my
website is working again, and asking me to call them.
So I called them today. The
person answering had no record of the call, didn’t understand anything I was
saying, and couldn’t wait to get me off the phone.
I don’t think the person was very technical either. I get the feeling they now have front line
support and then full support.
I decided to move my website, after all the problems I’ve had with
Telstra. Up until yesterday, I couldn’t
see most of my files even though they’re up and running.
I thought I’d give them another chance and called them enquire about
webhosting.
“Do you have anything between the free 10MB of webspace you give most
users and the 80MB for which you charge $50+”
“No”
“Do you think you should?”
Whilst the rest of the market is going for the single and small business
users, Telstra is offering a Rolls Royce solution which I’m guessing no-one
wants.
With the Aussie dollar being weak, I’ll bet they could clean up on the
world market let alone the Aussie market which they haven’t a clue about.
So I just bought my new 25MB of webspace from DomainDirect (part of
Tucows) now I have to set it up.
Which brings my on to my next problem.
I renewed my website names for 2 more years, tgtips.com, tg-tips.com and
tonygoodson.com.
When I tried to pay for the webspace after these purchases, it blocked
my credit card. I found out this evening
that my bank didn’t like too many weird across the world transactions so it
temporarily blocked any more purchases.
I suppose that’s a good thing.
So I had a think and realised I need an Aussie credit card, or even just
a card I can charge my business expenses to.
This is where it gets really frustrating. My business bank Macquarie, don’t have a
credit card or charge card, they routed me through to American Express.
I swear I went through 4 different menus on the phone all asking me the
same question. “Do I want to open a new
American Express card?” YES!!
You’d think this option would get you through the quickest, New
Business. But oh No.
So eventually a get through to someone.
I ask what the qualifying criteria is, and for someone like me it’s near
impossible to get an AMEX card or credit card.
I’ve been here 10 months, so I have no employment history. I’m effectively self employed.
So by all standard assessments I’m high risk.
And yet if someone were to talk to me and treat me like a human
customer, they’d find that I have assets and a rapidly growing business with
good cashflow.
What am I supposed to do? In the
end I gave up and got my second UK credit card working again. Not ideal but worth losing on the exchange
rate just to reduce the stress and hassle.
And a few more things to sort out today which were really irritating.
And now Georgia is screaming her head off tonight and won’t go to sleep
which is really unlike her.
Just one of those days.
Tuesday 14th May
2002
Just been in Perth for 10 days.
Good to be back to creature comforts.
Georgia is now fully crawling.
In the space of 5 minutes she managed to get to an electrical plug and I
stopped her.
She then crawled off into the bathroom.
No problem I thought, there’s noting on the floor and she can’t reach
out to anything.
Except she managed to shut the door and wedge herself behind the door.
I very carefully opened the door realising that she was behind it.
What I didn’t take into account was her fingers were under the door so
that when I gradually opened the door, her fingers were getting trapped.
I realised this before it hurt her too much.
Blimey, this parent thing is getting full on and it’s time for a house
redesign.
I lowered the cot base today, even though it’s a bit early to do that,
but just in case.
It’s a good idea to block the electric plug holes with child safe
inserts, but what about the plugged in plugs.
Why has Georgia given up on her toys and only wants to grab, taste,
test, real things.
The more dangerous the better.
And she’s only 7 months old.
Welcome to parenthood Tony.
The power of the Internet is amazing.
I received an email from a woman now living in France who thinks she
might have been in the first Blue Peter annual.
She noticed I’d said I had the annual, and she asked me if I could send
her a copy of the picture of her with her pet badger.
I scanned it, sent it to her, and it is her!
And finally, one link of the day.
More Anti-Gravity machines.
I’m not saying I believe this one.
It could be an elaborate hoax.
Have a look.
Sunday 12th May
2002
It’s Mothers Day today here
in Australia.
Annie’s first year as a mother.
Of course I had to do the right thing and buy
the card and pressie on behalf of Georgia (7 months old).
I bought some paint and dipped Georgia’s hand
in, so she could sign the card with a painted handprint.
Cute.
Called my Mummy as well to wish her happy
Aussie Mothers Day.
Friday 10th May
2002
Sven announced his team this week.
Amazing that’s there no surprises.
Just goes to show how sensible Sven is.
I doubt very much that they’ll go far.
The might escape the group of death by virtue of
everyone drawing or beating each other.
It’s too early for the team to be built on
spirit instead of skill.
And there are not enough world-class players
to achieve it on skill.
If you screwed your eyes up a bit, you could
see them, with a team of Seaman, Campbell, Ferdinand (or Keown), Beckham,
Gerrard, Hargreaves, an Owen, plus a few others, doing something if they put
their mind to it, put I don’t think that British sport is ready yet for an
Aussie type resurgence across the sports yet.
Sven’s the most likely to make it happen.
And if he shags a few blonde icons on the way,
all power to his elbow!
It’s about time we had someone leading us with
a big libido!!
Thursday 9th May
2002
A sad sad day.
Found out that Man Yoo lost to Arsenal at
home.
I would have bet anything on United beating
Arsenal at Old Trafford, with so much at stake.
It’s really galling for Arsenal to win The
Premiership at Old Trafford.
Mind you, if Man United can’t beat Arsenal at
Old Trafford on a decider then they don’t deserve to win The Premiership.
Six home loses this season.
Post Mortem.
Alec Ferguson. It’s as simple as
that. He made them and he broke them.
He confused the club this season with his
retirement and going back on his word.
He sold Stam.
He sold Sheringham and Cole.
He bought Veron.
He chopped and changed the defence for most of
the season. (This had nothing to do with the injuries).
He changed the tactics of playing 2 forwards
up front, and played Paul Scholes in a role that didn’t work.
He brought in Blanc.
I wouldn’t get rid of Fergie unless there is
better. And for me, only O’Neil,
Goran-Ericsson, and Wenger are better.
They have more integrity than Fergie, as well
as being potentially better managers.
On the other hand, United had a bad run of
injuries this season, and lacked the luck that often wins championships and
cups.
Van Nistelrooy was brilliant, and if he’d been
injured then the holes in United would really have shown up.
If Van Nistelrooy or Keane get injured next
season, then United will be stuffed.
The defence is good enough but injuries to
Keane and Van Nistelrooy would pose big problems.
It will be interesting to see what happens
next season.
Who they buy and sell, what the tactics are.
There’s not too much wrong with the team and
squad.
They need another player to hold the front
line if Van Nistelrooy is injured.
Veron needs to play a bigger role or leave.
Beckham could be replaced with an out and out
winger.
Johnsen is good if he doesn’t get injured.
Not sure about Blanc who most of the time is
now brilliant.
Same with Barthez. If you get rid of Barthez can you guarantee a
better goalkeeper?
I would have kept Stam, kept Sheringham and
Cole.
Sheringham gives you an extra option when
you’re struggling.
Cole can lead the line.
Stam hasn’t been properly replaced given that
United claim to be the biggest club in the world.
Defensive problems usually come from lack of
midfield cover, so what’s going wrong?
I would not get rid of any of the core players,
Nevilles, Beckham, Butt, Scholes, Giggs.
Get rid of one and them and you damage them
all.
Individually they may not be the best players
in the world, but as a group they fight for each other.
The root of it was losing Steve McClaren,
which was no fault of Fergie’s.
But announcing your retirement and then
selling more players than you’re buying and having a weaker squad than 1999, is
a disgrace.
Having said that, United came close to winning
The Premiership and the European Cup.
Wednesday 8th May
2002
Can’t think of anything to
blog about today.
Not done any surfing from my Perth hotel room.
Just remembered that I’m reading Tom Peters “Reinventing
Work the Brand You 50”.
It’s fun to read, a pick me up. Loads of fun ideas for branding yourself.
Having read The
Pursuit of WoW! a few years ago, it’s good to know I’m doing quite a bit of
Brand You, but there’s always room for improvement.
Tuesday 7th May
2002
I can’t upload my WebPages today.
Yet another Telstra problem.
Actually, I think much of the Australian
Internet was down today. So it’s not
directly Telstra’s fault this time.
However, having said that, when I phoned the
support desk for another matter, their frontline answering system was routing
through to the wrong support desk.
It just goes on and on. Although my website is up, I can’t see my
files on the server. I think it’s
because I may have gone over my 10MB limit.
The view of my files has disappeared.
So instead of Telstra saying “Dear Tony, you
appear to have gone over your 10 MB limit, here’s another 5 MB for free and
then let’s discuss how we can best host your website……” they just lose my files
and give me no sight of them. Thanks a
lot Telstra.
Anyway, I think I’ve found the place to go for
webhosting.
Some organisations smell of integrity and good
service. www.tucows.com
for downloads and www.domaindirect.com
for website domain names, which I think is part of Tucows.
They’re now offering webhosting at a good
price, and more importantly I think they’ll get it right and put it right
quickly if it goes wrong.
Telstra really don’t care. The support staff are great but the
management just want to manage the share price.
Countries want to be up there with technology,
and Australia is falling behind if measured by the growth in the number of
Broadband subscribers.
Places like South Korea and Canada are having
massive growth.
It depends on local pricing and government
desire to get ahead in I.T and Communications development.
There’s often no direct benefit in subscribers
being on broadband, but in South Korea, having a high proportion of the
population on Broadband, is helping with anticipating new markets and
developing for them.
Here in Australia we have patronising adverts,
which I think, are downright lies, showing video playing instantaneously on a
PC.
The implication being if you have Broadband,
then Video will play instantaneously.
Yeh right!
Having gone back to my laptop and modem whilst
I’m away in Perth, I swear by Broadband.
You certainly aren’t able to download video
instantaneously, but the speed of download and upload, the ease of connection,
the reliability (in spite of Telstra), the ease of use, means that Broadband is
worth a few dollars more. With
Broadband, the Internet really becomes a part of your life rather than a slow
pain in the arse. If you’re into bargain
hunting and saving the pennies then stick with modem connections.
If you like an easy life for a few dollars per
month, go Broadband.
Monday 6th May 2002
I bank with Westpac, the
third biggest bank in Australia.
Not for much longer.
I watched the Westpac CEO, David Morgan being
interviewed for a business programme yesterday.
Westpac nearly went bust 10 years ago, and
recently they’ve announced their first $1 billion profit for a financial
quarter.
So he’s feeling pretty proud of himself right
now.
People repeat their issues time and time
again.
What they’re interested in they repeat several
times.
You can tell who fancies who by how many times
they repeat the same name.
Now I swear that David Morgan must have said
“Shareholder Value” at least 10 times.
He seemed to say it every other sentence.
I wonder what drives him?
Staying in his job and getting a fat bonus by
providing shareholder value?
I’m a customer of Westpac, unfortunately, I
joined when I first arrived here a year ago because my wife’s family banks with
the Bank of Melbourne who are now owned by Westpac.
I don’t give a shit about shareholder value!!
I care about customer and employee values.
David Morgan, you can take “Shareholder Value”
and shove it where the sun don’t shine.
You’ve very clearly demonstrated where your
priorities lie and I as a customer who wants to see you make good revenue and
some profit don’t seem to share the same values.
I’m heartily sick of companies and their board
members sucking up to the stock market and shareholders.
If you go and make good revenue and profit
then the shares and shareholders will look after themselves.
You do that by giving value to customers not
shareholders.
Giving customers something they want and are
prepared to pay for.
Not seeking to fleece clients and employees
for all their worth to provide “Shareholder Value”
To hell with you.
On a more optimistic note and talking of
crawling. Georgia’s been fully crawling
for the last few days.
She crawled to me just before. I was kneeling
on the floor.
When she got to me she put her hands on my
knees, pushed and stood up!!
So she just stood up effectively!!
Just like that!
She doesn’t sit, she’s gone straight to
crawling and now probably standing and she’s only just over 7 months old.
Proud Dad.
Pushy Parent (I hope not).
Sunday 5th May 2002
My best
man, Mark is marrying Sam today in France.
Sorry I
can’t be there, I’m in Perth, Western Australia for a few days.
I’m
sitting in a dark hotel room whilst my 7 month daughter sleeps.
I realise that coming to Perth is a deep
emotional experience for me.
My Dad died when I was 16, nearly 25 years
ago.
His sister lives here in Perth so meeting her is
always a strange connection with his nearest relative.
Also her daughter (my cousin) introduced me and
Annie, and David my cousin who I saw for the first time in 35 years, when we
were on honeymoon, looks like me.
It’s very strange to look at someone and see
some of yourself. We have the same nose,
so I can now look at my nose in 3D.
Also my parents' best friends moved to Perth 30
years ago.
My Dad and Sol used to spend hours together
talking business and ideas.
Sol was the one person my Dad talked to.
Sol came to the hotel yesterday, and we were
talking business, like I was my Dad.
I freak my Auntie and Sol out a bit because I
look so much like my Dad, so they almost get confused when they talk
to me.
And of course bringing Georgia here to show her off
to all these people, and Annie's family who originate from Perth.
The weather here is beautiful.
Saturday 4th May
2002
Barbara Castle, one of my
all time heroes (heroine) has died. I
loved her grittiness. I love her desired
to succeed. I love her bluntness. Although I don’t like any politician and
believe they are all a bunch of compromised crooks, crying crocodile tears, at
least she appeared to come closer than most of them to being principled.
Most of all I loved her interview with
Parkinson in the 70s I think, where she talked about becoming a woman MP,
largely because she had belief that you can do anything you set your mind
to. We are all mostly capable of
anything we want. Thank you Barbara
Castle, you inspired me to what is possible.
Watched Sliding Doors last night on the
telly. They stole my idea!
I thought it was just me that thought we move
into a parallel world in each split second and with each event.
I’ve often thought that we die in each split second
and move into two worlds, one where we continue to live and another where we
leave those behind to cope with our death.
It is an amazing thought about chaos theory
and butterfly wing flapping, can set off series of events that moves us into a
direction we could not have thought possible.
Five years ago I was about to get
married. Happily living in Islington,
London, working in large complex sales in the I.T industry. No children, 2 cats.
One event (a conversation/argument) a year
later in 1998, set off a chain reaction, that has transported me here to Perth
Australia 2002, typing this in a darkened hotel room whilst me daughter
sleeps.
How did I get from Islington to a Perth Hotel
room, typing on a laptop, married to a different woman, no cats, one 7 month
old daughter, my own training company, and travelling round Australia.
If you had said to me at the beginning of 1998
that I’d be married to someone else, living in Australia, with a 7-month-old
daughter asleep in a hotel room in Perth, it would have been beyond my
comprehension.
And many events this week have been a chain
reaction from things which just seem to happen from fuses I lit months and
years ago.
I’ve picked up lots of training work this week
based on events I set off almost year ago when I first arrived in Australia.
It often makes my wonder at what things we can
do today which set events off in the future.
Amazing.
Actually when I think about it, I set many
fuses off with the emails I write to many people.
Some of them catch, and I realise that some
just phut out.
Wednesday 1st May
2002
The single most important information I read or heard over the last 10
years is a tape of a talk by Dr Joel Robbins on Enzymes.
It changed my views on health and diet for ever.
I heard the tape about 8 years ago and the things Joel Robbins said then
still hold up nutritionally.
It does though, make a mockery of our Western diet and influence of
global corporates on what we believe is healthy but isn’t.
It shows there are powers at work today that are killing us prematurely
with our diet.
And forget most nutritionists.
They just follow the line of standard medical practise.
You know what I mean, potatoes are good for you, then they’re bad for
you, then they’re good for you, and now they’re bad for you.
So which is it? Is high protein,
low fat, low/high carbohydrate good or bad?
Of course the way the medical and nutrition establishment get round this
is to say “Have a healthy balanced diet”
What the hell does that mean?
Joel Robbins’s line is raw food.
The less we process food the better.
This includes all raw food, meat, as well as vegetables and fruit.
He claims the root of all this is enzymes in the food which help you
digest what you eat and put less of a strain on your body.
Heating food will kill the enzymes.
He gives examples.
A heated bean won’t grow.
If you heat treat milk from a cow to it’s calf, the calf eventually
dies. The enzymes in the milk have been
obliterated.
Communities that live longest eat more raw food.
I can’t find where you can get the tape of Joel Robbins’s talk but here’s a link to one of his
articles.
The other book I keep recommending which follows the same line is Allen
Carr’s Easyweigh
to Lose Weight, where rather than medical research,
Allen Carr uses common sense to work out what we should be eating.
Ideally it should be the diet of a Gorilla or Chimpanzee, but it doesn’t
matter if you deviate from this too much.
The human body can cope.
So whilst diet fads come and go, and chocolate is good for us, then its
bad for us, then it’s good for us, then it’s bad for us,
Check out Joel Robbins and Allen Carr on the Internet.