Over the falls

Wow. It's really really cold here in Newfoundland. And by really cold, I mean really, really cold. The forecast low today was zero, and the forecast high was 1. Now normally, when the weather man is off by a degree or so, nobody really minds. But when it was the only degree we were going to get, I must admit I felt a bit jilted. In the end, the high (and the low!) today turned out to be just zero. There are flurries of snow blowing around, and it gets dark at half past four in the afternoon. My poor bald head is glowing red - I know, bring a hat.. Noted. Meanwhile, my anti-colleague, Simon (I do actually have some friends who aren't called Simon) , just rang me from Miami, where it was 28 degrees Celsius , and he was watching the sun set from his air-conditioned hotel. Nice...

Well, after a bunch of sleeping on the sidewalk in subzero temperatures, we finally managed to secure a Wii . Sleeping outside of a department store has never been on my list of things I wanted to achieve, and I don't think I would recommend it to anyone I liked. But, (and I'm sticking to my story) - I never really planned to sleep outside. Patrick and I drove down to our local Wal *Mart to try and persuade them to sell us one at midnight, to save my other plan of getting up at 6am and trying to find a console. Of course, when we arrived at Fair Lakes Mall, there were people camping out all over the place, at 11:30. The Wal *Mart guy laughed at us, and said - "Maybe if you arrived here at 8 this morning, like the guys out the front!" So, we unwittingly found ourselves in the line outside of Target. "Hang on", I Thought. "This isn't the kind of line that moves. We will be here all night..." But by then, four other people had already sat down ...

It's extremely cold. I feel like I've reached a new level of fanboydom. I'm sitting outside target at 1am, with my son, rugged up in sleeping bags, waiting for the Nintendo Wii, which is released tomorrow morning. At our last count, Pat and I were the 51st people in the line, for the alleged 80 Wii consoles. Blogging via Blackberry hurts my thumbs, so I'll post the outcome later...

Okay, so I'm not exactly immune to picking on Windows vista... But - I just installed the Release Candidate 2, and I have to say - I'm impressed. The installation process was so smooth and so easy - it only asked me two questions - what time zone are you in?, and; what desktop background would you like? These are easy questions. I like them. So far... so good...

Sometimes I wonder which is the more noble pursuit: Providing structured social commentary on the complex artifacts of the human society we live in, This includes things like keeping abreast of new technologies, discussing long-winded and entirely artificial constructs like records management, or: Reporting the simple delights of nature. The things that make me smile, that ring with all of us. The underlying humanist principles that don't need to be hugely detailed, or have whole industries built around them, because they are so built into us all that we appreciate them anyway. I've lost some of the piqueness I had when I set out to write this post, because I have spent the last few hours in a crowded bar in Dallas Airport , watching commercials(in between a game of American Football). Inspired by Wordsworth , and his boundless enthusiasm for the natural world, I idly both wandered and wondered the terminal, which is absolutely massive, and could almost be seen as a monument to...

You know, you have to keep a constant watch on the sneaky blogosphere. Sometimes your friends will just start blogging - without even telling you! Fortunately, there are lots of ways to find them. Technorati knows all (well, some stuff anyway...) Take that, Big Headed Simon! Subscribed :) (You know, six of the top eight hits on google for the phrase " Big Headed Simon " are actually about Big Headed Simon. I think he is the only one in the whole world!)

I'm proud to announce that TOWER Software (my employer) has recently unveiled it's new blog ( the RSS feed is here .) The plan is for TOWER to share some of it's insights and experiences developing TRIM Context, and solving Enterprise Content Management problems from around the world. I know, most of you are probably thinking.."that sounds really, really boring!", but hey - it's my life! You should check out some of the posts before you jump to any premature conclusions - I certainly plan to contribute a post or two, and feel free to drop by and leave a comment. The web is a two way medium, after all :)

I just accidentally pressed Ctrl + Shift + C in my new build of Firefox 2.0 for Windows. Check it out - a separate tab just popped up listing every style used on the page I was viewing, including a direct link to the CSS files themselves. Now, that's extremely cool. Stealing designs from people just got the tiniest bit easier! (Not that I would ever condone such an activity, of course :)

I have to vote in the US Senate Election Tomorrow. Okay, I don't have to vote, but being an Australian American, voting is something we do. Australia has compulsory voting, which I am overwhelmingly supportive of. People often assume that the point of compulsory voting is to somehow educate people about politics - to force them to have an opinion. The reality has nothing to do with voters, and everything to do with ensuring good governance - By forcing politicians to care about every voter, rather than just the ones who can be bothered to go down to the poll both and vote, it means that politicians are consequently forced to address the needs of all the citizens in the country. Under a non compulsory voting system, it's mainly the wealthy and educated who vote. I was a little shocked to find out that part of the aim of the campaign advertisements that have been confusing me for the last month on TV is not to encourage voters to vote for one candidate or another, but to discou...

Despite the traffic and the population, Virginia is really an amazingly beautiful and fertile place. Here's a few fall snapshots taken from my front yard, (except for the last one, which believe it or not was actually taken in my lounge room ...)

My brother Grae just launched his photoblog , at the enviable (well, for some of us), domain of http://taylor.net.au . EDIT: Oh, and speaking of things that are purdy, you should check out: http://www.jonathanyuen.com/main.html for some transcendental web flash magic,..

One startup at a time, I guess... Google just announced the acquisition of one of the coolest little wiki engines ever, JotSpot . I've always been quite a fan of the technology and the approach behind JotSpot . (Any company that has a regular hackathon is okay with me!)It will be great to see what google can do to bring the wiki to the masses. Wikis are definitely my favourite collaboration tools. All those other "big C" collaboration, joint editing instant messagey things (like Groove ) all seem to be a bit intimidating. Wikis are easy to use, and they have instant appeal - people can see the value really quickly. Which is kind of like Google, really...

From the random links department, two things that took my fancy, from opposite ends of the ethical spectrum: The Punk-O- Matic lets you compose a variety of authentic sounding cool punk tunes using Guitar Bass and Drums. Rock on!. mmmzr is an unpronounceable, yet maybe a little bit brilliant site which uses a pyramid style scheme to extract money from advertisers. Right up there with the million dollar homepage and 'wash-your-own-car' for ideas you wish you had thought of.