I’ve long been fascinated with how web services can begin to replace tools that once upon a time would have been firmly located on your home machine. Flickr is a great example of something that is handled online, almost better and more flexibly than it is handled locally, sharing and collaboration is much easier, and if you are so motivated your picture collection becomes portable. A new kid on the block is NetVibes - an ajax enabled homepage replacement, which aggregates information from a number of places into a personalized portal. There are plenty of these around – MSN have Start.com, Google and Yahoo have theirs, but NetVibes is something special – it looks good, runs quickly and seems agile enough to really deliver features quickly. I’m using it as my homepage now – I’m watching carefully to see when new modules are added, and whether there will be an API so we can see all the excellent ideas peoples put together for this service.
So….I bought one those fancy Sony PSP’s on the launch day, pretty darn cool…games, music, movies even wifi – in a nice neat package that you can take on the train or plane. I’m very pleased with it…gameplay is as excellent as you would expect. I got 4 games: TOCA Racing, Lumines, Spiderman 2 and Need for Speed Underground…they’re all good in their own way and I’m not gonna talk about each one. But the real revelation for me is that I can watch movies on the thing – I’ve been looking for a gadget that lets me play movies on the train or plane (without getting my laptop out), and this one – finally does it. It’ll get geeky here – so I’ll put more inside.
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That means I need to queue at the sandwich bar at work today…sniff.
Shuttle Columbia is back - everyone interested in space travel (however marginally) can now breathe a sigh of relief. Welcome Home.
One of my all time heroes is Banksy - a london based graffiti artist who creates some of the most thought provoking and clever statements through his graffiti. I understand his background was in tagging – but he made the move to more stencil based art (to ensure he was quicker). One of his most recent projects has been some art on the West Bank Barrier - the worlds most offensive eyesore (/opinion). Previously he has duped the British Museum into keeping one his works in their exhibition, and made some great statements across london. Of course – Banksy doesn’t really exist.
If ever there was a good candidate to have a blog – its Kevin Smith – incredibly funny guy, his blog is here.
Escape to the Legion finished last night – the Channel 4 programme following 12 men who volunteered to take something similar to the basic training for a Legionnaire…unquestionably the training was tough, but I imagine that the real thing would be even harder. I’m full of admiration for the four guys that completed it, unexepectedly in some cases. The guys that dropped out must really regret either their injuries, or not trying harder. The scene of the four guys (and the ‘officers’) running towards the sea at the end of their final march was just brilliant. To see their faces and bodies before and after the training was amazing, thinned down and hardened by the physical training and toughened by the sun and sand of the Western Sahara. It was a great series, the sort of thing that Channel 4 does really well. The Foreign Legion is undeniably one of the toughest groups in the world – still at the forefront of major conflicts.
The new MSN Screensaver (download it here) is truly excellent, grabs pictures from your hard drive, and displays them alongside RSS feeds, weather, mail and messenger status…its simple, smooth and just whats needed…grab yourself a copy early.
I was not directly affected by yesterdays events in London, I made no frantic phone calls to loved ones, I had no journey stopped under a tunnel – and besides momentarily wondering and chasing a colleague, my disruption was limited to checking the news websites and stopping work to check the TV’s nearby.
But, watching London woken from its dreams of stadiums and sprinters, and reminded of its history of irish bombs and german rockets – still bought tears to my eyes, seeing my beautiful city bought to a standstill by evil.
There will be millions of words written & spoken today, in the newspapers, websites and blogs, on the TV shows and radio phone ins, and over cups of tea in countless canteens and coffee shops around the world – none will ease the pain of people who have lost loved ones, friends and colleagues, and none will ever erase the memory of people trapped underground on a tube train, or showered with wreckage from a bus. I have no words to describe how that may feel.
The best reactions yesterday were from two men I usually have no time for – but the off-the-cuff remarks of Ken Livingstone will live in my ears for a long time, and the (probably) well prepared, but still geniune speech from Tony Blair (in London in the evening) will be my take-away from yesterdays shock.
"I want to say one thing, specifically to the world today – this was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful, it was not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian … young and old … that isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted fate, it is an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder."
"They seek to divide London, they seek Londoners to turn against each other … this city of London is the greatest in the world because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack."
"I know that you personally do not fear to give your own life in exchange to taking others [that is why you are so dangerous] … but I know you do fear you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society … in the days that follow, look at our airports, look at our seaports and look at our railway stations … you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world, will arrive in London to become Londoners, to fulfill their dream and achieve their potential … whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."
Ken Livingstone, July 7th 2005
"It is a very sad day for the British people but we will hold true to the British way of life. It is through terrorism that the people who have committed this terrible act express their values and it is right at this moment that we demonstrate ours, They are trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cow us, to frighten us out of doing the things that we want to do, of trying to stop us going about our business as normal as we are entitled to do. They should not and they must not succeed."
Tony Blair, July 7th 2005
I am not a supporter – but if ever there was a message we should listen to – it’s this.
I try not to do long posts on here – but I’ll finish with this – lifted from here
A letter to the terrorists:
What the fuck do you think you’re doing?
This is London. We’ve dealt with your sort before. You don’t try and pull this on us.
Do you have any idea how many times our city has been attacked? Whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not going to work.
All you’ve done is end some of our lives, and ruin some more. How is that going to help you? You don’t get rewarded for this kind of crap.
And if, as your MO indicates, you’re an al-Qaeda group, then you’re out of your tiny minds.
Because if this is a message to Tony Blair, we’ve got news for you. We don’t much like our government ourselves, or what they do in our name. But, listen very clearly. We’ll deal with that ourselves. We’re London, and we’ve got our own way of doing things, and it doesn’t involve tossing bombs around where innocent people are going about their lives.
And that’s because we’re better than you. Everyone is better than you. Our city works. We rather like it. And we’re going to go about our lives. We’re going to take care of the lives you ruined. And then we’re going to work. And we’re going down the pub.
So you can pack up your bombs, put them in your arseholes, and get the fuck out of our city.
UPDATE : someone sent me a link to this – even better – statement as to why London will rise above this.
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