Guy Richie's Nike Ad

Classy ad with a simple story

Argument with Beethoven

Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray mime an argument to Beethoven's fifth symphony. I will never hear it the same way again.

Fashion in the technology industry

In the tech industry we are supposed to be logical. But in fact technology is just as fashion ridden as the music industry. Ted Neward explains:

Microsoft (I think) is making a huge mistake by looking to make C# more dynamic in nature[1]. My position was (and is) that Microsoft needs to differentiate the two key languages they offer--C# and Visual Basic--and an obvious way to do so would be to designate VB as the official "dynamic language" for the CLR, and C# as the official "static language" for the CLR, and encourage developers to use C# to build infrastructure (libraries and business types and so on) and VB to build "top of the stack" kinds of code (WinForms, ASP.NET, and so on). Neal put me squarely back on my heels with this (paraphrased) comment: Microsoft will never do this, because Visual Basic will never be able to shed the image it has gained, that of being the programming language for idiots

Why Manchester United beat Arsenal

I’ve got a friend from Chester that I see occasionally. Two years ago when I was back home I went for a drink with him and he told me this story. He works in construction for one of the McAlpine companies. He’s some sort of manager but he spends a lot of time on-site. A few years back he was working on the construction of the Emirates Stadium. This must have been weird as my friend is a fanatical Red. The story is that one day when they were pouring concrete for part of the foundations, he and two other northerners buried a Manchester United jersey underneath the pitch. It was an old Sharp era shirt. If this was supposed to curse Arsenal it didn’t work too well as last season they did the double over Manchester United. Perhaps these sort of curses take a while to work as this season Arsenal have fallen apart, despite playing beautiful football. I’d forgotten about this incident but on Sunday the New York Yankees dug through two and a half feet of concrete to remove a Red Sox jersey that had been buried there by a Boston fan. He had been intending to jinx the new Yankee Stadium that is being built. So clearly these sort of practices do have some power.

Family privacy

I have a relative who works hard to maintain his privacy. He asks that there should be no photographs of him or his family on the open web. I use flickr for photographs. To accommodate him I had to persuade family members to do some work so that they could be marked as my family on flickr. This was only partially successful as for some it’s too much work or too much trouble. I know that I often stop pursuing anything sent to me if it involves a registration page.

I think that having public stuff on the internet is fine. It brings much more good than harm. I found my relative’s attitude strange.

At Spring break the rest of my immediate family went up to Sacramento by train. I put their photos up on flickr. Then weirdly one of those photos started to get huge (for me) numbers of hits. Four people marked it as a favorite. What was going on? The picture shows my pre-teen daughter holding up a glove she found. The glove looms in the foreground, it blocks most of the face, It’s a cute photo taken by the expert photographer in our family. It’s a leather glove. Was this some pervy thing? Some work revealed that someone posted the link to a community for people who like to see Women in Gloves, Boots and Leather.

This exceeded my comfort level. I marked the image on flickr as being for friends and family only. I don't think anything bad happened. But it did make me feel uncomfortable.

A Pre-Teen Guide to Becoming an Outsider

G was amused by this, which is good as she scores highly

I have a new representative in congress

Because I live in the bit of San Francisco where tourists don't go I don't get to have Nancy Pelosi as my representative in congress. My rep used to be the only Holocaust survivor to have served in the US Congress. He died in February and we have elected Jackie Speier.

[She] was sworn into Congress this morning and delivered a fiery speech criticizing President Bush's Iraq policy that led some Republicans to boo and walk out of the House chamber.

Jackie Speier also survived a murder attempt in Guyana by members of the Peoples Temple shortly before the Jonestown Massacre.

I am sure she will show herself to be as cowardly as most Democrats, but for now I am pleased.

Cristian slays Romans

A few weeks ago Paul Jewell said:

You can't man-mark him because he starts off up front, drifts wide, comes into the hole. He's six-foot two, brave as a lion, strong as an ox, quick as lightning.

If he was good-looking, you'd say he had everything.

The Boredoms @ The Fillmore 18-Mar-2008

The Boredoms equipment was set up in the middle of the Fillmore’s auditorium. The stage area was about 20 feet by 15, raised up a couple of feet. I have never been to a standing concert that was ‘in the round’ before and the first thing to decide was where to stand. The Boredoms have a special instrument called the Sevena which is made of seven electric guitars joined together with the heads sticking out sideways. I reasoned that this was a good thing to stand near. I was proved right as Boredoms leader Yamantaka Eye stands just in front of the Sevena. There are three drummers, all playing trap kits. Fans of Yoshimi P-We should note that her kit is set up diagonally across from Eye. Another member of the band has a job playing occasional keyboards and propping up and retuning the Sevena after Eye has beaten on it. This guy may have been Shinji Masuko the creator of the Sevena. I couldn’t really see the third drummer but the one to Eye’s left is a monster player.

The music was psychedelic. The Sevena is basically a percussion instrument which Eye hammers at with sticks. The three drummers produce an overwhelming noise. At times I was irresistibly driven to ecstatically bang my head. Sometimes Eye moves to the centre of the stage, throws his head back and screams like a shaman. There is a lot of noise in the sound, but it is there for a reason. This is music and it makes total sense when you are in the middle of it.

The Fillmore is still one of the friendliest places to see a band in San Francisco. Unusually the security staff put a lot of effort into preventing people from taking photographs. I assume this is an attempt by the band to maintain the sacredness of the performance space. For any other band this might seem pretentious but I buy it.

At the end the band went right by me as they threaded through the crowd. Eye was on crutches. He seemed smaller off the stage. As they passed people shouted congratulations and there were pats on the back and handshakes. It seemed to me that no one dared to touch Yoshimi, who trailed the others. She was smiling and saying “Arigato”. In reply I give my thanks to the Boredoms for a fantatstic gig that I feel lucky to have been able to attend.