Over the falls

Well, that's that. I think that the most appropriate collective noun for nine-year old boys is probably a 'Holler', or maybe a 'Shriek'. (Actually, a Shriek is probably a group of nine year old girls ) After lots of Nintendo, pillow fights, far too many lollies, and a movie, Pat and his friends finally made it to bed at 12:30 AM. Sufice to say that everyone had a great time, and everybody was really well behaved, even if Mum and Dad are feeling a little haggard. The way I managed to get them to sleep was by playing them a piece of music by The Necks. (and no, I can't stop linking to wikipedia. It's just too cool.) If you've never heard The Necks before, you should go and check them out. I once heard their music described as "The sound of the plumbing of the universe, shuddering into action". That's probably better than any description I could give. What's really impressive, is the versatility of their music. So far, I've discover...

It's my son Patrick's slumber party tonight, so we're preparing to be inundated with a bunch of nine year olds. I'm not sure what the collective noun for nine year olds is, so I'll go with 'bunch' for the time being...We just returned from Pat's Saturday Soccer game - (for the record, the BelSouth Cougars beat the Gunghalin Knights 3-2.) The Cougars don't win very many games, but they always have lots of fun. When I asked Pat this morning if I thought the Cougars would triumph, he said: "Nope. But that's okay, becuase I'm going to bet on the other team."

During a meeting today where we were discussing product futures, the subject of the TRIM Connectivity Toolkit came up. (The TRIM Connectivity Toolkit is a feature of TRIM Context 5.2.3. It's a SOAP/WSDL interface which allows developers to write code from any platform to integrate with TRIM Context .) All members of senior management were unanimous in the assertion that the TCT was an excellent product, and that it was right up there with the most successful development projects run at TOWER. So, a big congratulations to Stilly and Simon for a job well done. If you're writing TRIM code, you should really check it out, (it's available now) because it's a great way to get the job done when you can't use COM, or you need your smart HTTP client to work through a firewall - the possibilities are endless. Okay, not really endless, but there are a lot.

Despite the fact that Ian claims to own the internet , (Air Supply! bwa ha ha!) I'm going to jump on this CD tagging thing. It's possibly worth adding that I don't actually ever play these on any device that spins optical discs. Five Recent CD Purchases Oysterhead - The Grand Pecking Order The Flaming Lips - Clouds Taste Metallic John Frusciante - Shadows Collide with People Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams John Coltrane - Greatest Hits Five CDs You Have Had For a While, and Still Play Regularly Miles Davis - Kind of Blue Primus - Pork Soda Jack Johnson - Brushfire Fairytales The Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik The Necks - Hanging Gardens Five CDs You Might not admit to owning, or having owned, unless your conscience makes you fess up on a blog: The presidents of the united states of america (thanks simon for reminding me) The Squirrel Nut Zippers - Hot Cordurouy - The New You! I'll admit to owning everythin...

Okay, so picking on Microsoft is always a bit sad and easy, but the anouncement that LongHorn has a new name is too hard to resist. Check out the new name for Longhorn: Windows Vista Most people I've spoken to seem to think it's a relatively stupid name, but I kind of like it. Regardless, this picture just begs for a caption contest. My effort: "Hey look, from up here, you can't even see last year's ship date"

I do love a good generalization. Even better when they come in bite size chunks: "A half -formed plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorow" Turns out it 's attributed to General Patton, but I always mistakenly attributed it to the man who my Mom insists is my ancestor, and many others regard as the worst president of the United States ever, General Ulysses S Grant. "Many a good man has failed because he had his wishbone where his backbone should have been." - unknown (he has lots of good quotes...) "Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you'll be a mile from them, and you'll have their shoes." Jack Handy. I have know idea who Jack is, but he also penned this gem: "The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face" Think about it....

While I'm blogging silly google-related stuff that is entertaining, you should go and check out Woogle . Woogle uses the Google APIs to display words in pictures. It's pretty fun. Some awfully lame prize to the person who can discover what this common phrase is...

In honour of the moon landing anniversary, Google have released Google Moon. Powered by google maps, it also reveals the surface of earth's moon in high resolution detail like never before. Follow the link , and make sure you take full advantage of the zoom slider on the left. Amazing!

This comic is hanging on the wall of the Context ICE team at work. Ironically, Stilly seems to be a member of this camp . I say ironically, because it was his brother who put me onto the campaign in the first place... Go on Faye, Give him one for me! bwa ha ha...

People end up taking risks for lots of different reasons. Some people actively chase them, like the BASE jumping lunatics who jump off buildings to see if they don't die. Others stumble upon risks accidentally, through naivete or poor judgment. Whatever the reasons are, people seem to have sort of a love-hate relationship with risk. Most people hate being in risky situations, but then, they love watching other people being in them. Almost all TV and Movie plots revolve around some degree of risk. Wherever there's a crazed stuntman jumping off a building, or some half brained thug trying to root two chicks at once on Big Brother, there's always a much huger number of people gawking, open-mouthed, desperate for some really risky situation to eventuate. It's like the gene for taking risks is happily traveling along the digital river of our DNA with us, propagated by the brave and crazy, and whole heartedly endorsed by the rest of us wimps. Mark Jen took a risk blogging som...

Straight from the I-close-my-eyes-and-yet-I-see-only-the-blocks department, here's a great fun puzzle game from korea , complete with squeaky noises.

(This is the second in a series of posts about why people blog. The original post can be found here ) 2. Writing it makes it true. One of the sad facts about people is that they are very easily manipulated. Companies spend heaps of money on advertising, because it changes the way people think, and ultimately changes the way people behave. In the companies case, they want to modify your behaviour - from a state of not spending your money on their product or service, to a state of spending your money. Not a particularly harmful goal, but then not a particularly worthwhile one either (unless you happen to be them.) but that's another post. Appeal for Credibility Not all of these marketing tricks are successful. Some products are just stoopid, and no amount of promotional gumpf can convince anyone to buy them. ( CueCat anyone?) But a cornerstone of all these pitches, both successful and unsuccessful, is the appeal for credibility. The aim is to get over your personal barrier for not b...

Why blog? This is something that's been plaguing me lately. I mean, people have been keeping diaries for years, but they've really only been publishing them to the world for the last five or so. There's a lot of hooplah all over the place about how blogging will change the world. Surely the same could have happened in the seventeenth century if everybody had just read everybody else's diaries? (Seventeenth century RSS might have consisted of a bunch of poncey aristocrats standing around in knickerbockers passing diaries around in a circle..) Knickerbockers aside, after giving it much thought, I've come up with a list of reasons why it is that people blog. Ego Magic Writing it makes it true. Risk Posterity Altruism Conversation Socialising Promotion Mainly because I'm honestly curious, (but partially for want of something to post), I'm going to explore these in a bit more depth over a few posts. 1. Ego Magic Here's the se...

Here's my letter to the G8 fellahs next week. I filled it in at the global call to action against poverty site. You should go fill one in too , unless you're in favour of exploiting poor people. Dear G8 World Leaders, We all know that 'a child dies every three seconds from extreme poverty'. Statistics are so often quoted and mis-quoted that they lose their impact. Which is sad, because that's an atrocious fact. Even if it's not correct (I have no idea where it comes from, it was just written on this form letter) and it's out by a factor of 100, that's still atrocious. Words and numbers aren't going to provide any benefit to alleviate the problems plaguing the worlds poor. What's needed is action. Collectively,as a species, we have the resources and the skill to solve this problem. What we lack is the resolve. I ask that you listen to the voices of other people around the world and ensure that at the summit, you will make decisions that lead to ...