of truth. No not the quote but the game show. Having got into it recently my confession is that yes it should be regarded as garbage at the same time though it does have a unique appeal / allure. Maybe because we are always drawn to the dark side like moths to the flame.
No there is nothing wrong with the 'dramas' of the players. People who took money from the family business, overcharged customers, had more than 10 night stands, daughters that felt sexual attraction for their mother's boyfriend, do not feel in love with their current partner, thinking of breaking up while they have a parallel illicite affair... Just ordinary people like you and me. With secrets, weaknesses, passions.
The difference being that these people who participate in the show get up on the stand knowing that they will hurt people - close people, including themselves. And for what ? Most people settle for 10.000 or 25.000 euros.
Hardly enough money to secure them financially, certainly not money to cover towards their basic needs, more likely to cover their wants. I don't feel sorry for the main players, I can't though not think about the surroudning family circle. Don't they know how it is gonna end up? Don't they have a choice? Or do they sell their collective family dignity to 'support' their son/daugher/boyfriend/girlfriend etc (and share the loot?).
Sunday 16 November 2008
Saturday 25 October 2008
The power of...
... visualisation or how to make people relate to facts and statistics. Not any facts and statistics, but those highlighting habbits and behaviours that are harmful to themselves (mostly) or to others.
A friend was recently at a "compulsory seminar" shall we say about road safety after he was caught speeding, in order to avoid having some points taken of his driving license. They must have scared him quite effectively since he seems to be a changed man now when it comes to road safety...
How does that relate to visualisation? Simple. In order to get the point across they used a number of videos depicting simulations of distance covered after breaking vs. vehicle speed. Suffice to say that the realtion is geometric, you could be F1 race driver but you still can't beat physics.
In closing just to demonstrate the effectiveness of visualisation watch the video below - especially if you are smoker (I am not a smoker and hell this video shocked me for the effects of passive smoking...)
A friend was recently at a "compulsory seminar" shall we say about road safety after he was caught speeding, in order to avoid having some points taken of his driving license. They must have scared him quite effectively since he seems to be a changed man now when it comes to road safety...
How does that relate to visualisation? Simple. In order to get the point across they used a number of videos depicting simulations of distance covered after breaking vs. vehicle speed. Suffice to say that the realtion is geometric, you could be F1 race driver but you still can't beat physics.
In closing just to demonstrate the effectiveness of visualisation watch the video below - especially if you are smoker (I am not a smoker and hell this video shocked me for the effects of passive smoking...)
Saturday 18 October 2008
Sunday 12 October 2008
Fight Club...
..was not to be talked about (see first rule of fightclub) but definately a wicked and kind of 'standing on its own' movie. Can it be topped and if so by whon and how? Well a good start is Choke based on another book from Chuck Palahniuk who authored fight club in the first place.
Saturday 11 October 2008
Top games...
... (computer games that is) from my childhod that I could still play / get back into again:
- The 'real time strategy' clan: warcraft II, command and conquer, starcraft
- The 'real time tactics' range commandos , desperados
- The 'can't classify games: Worms, Crusader
Friday 10 October 2008
Strips..
Not biltong strips this time, just some of the comic strips I follow online(when I remember to do so)
Sunday 21 September 2008
Every joke...
hides an element of truth. The following clip is definately a testament to that.Not a bad music score either...
Sunday 27 July 2008
Trend and hype or innate curiocity?
I am referring to the plethora of books out there, starting from the girl with a single track mind, moving on to the callgirl, and proceeding to the girl in high heels.
More and more books of this type are to be found on the top shelves of bookstores.People read one, two what next? It is unlikely there will be anything new. However we are all excited and intrigued to find out what happens behind the scenes at these industries and professions.
It used to be the babylon series:
Probably the ones outstanding are life in the city and confessions of a pornstar (after all jenna has now retired).
More and more books of this type are to be found on the top shelves of bookstores.People read one, two what next? It is unlikely there will be anything new. However we are all excited and intrigued to find out what happens behind the scenes at these industries and professions.
It used to be the babylon series:
- airlines
- hotels
- luxury beach resorts
- fashion
- pop music
Probably the ones outstanding are life in the city and confessions of a pornstar (after all jenna has now retired).
Saturday 28 June 2008
A Crisis...
real or perceived is the only way to drive change. At the same time change meets resistance. How can one overcome this resistance? Apparently using one of the methods below.
Monday 16 June 2008
Fragile...
No not the song, my laptop that is or to be more precise its operating system. Ubuntu. Yes it is a low end laptop, it came with Vista and it was not performing. Yes Vista have their imperfections and need 2GB RAM to work decent, copying file was a nightmare before the service pack BUT:
a) network cards (wifi) would not disaapear after upgrade (as it happened with ubuntu)
b) keyboard mappings would not messed up after some security upgrade (still not clear what exactly triggered this)
If I was not a young IT guy happy to tinker around, but in my 50s with a family, limited time would I have the luxury of spending 2-3 evenings (so far) to sort out the above? Let alone whatever else might come. Or would I get the 'consumer solution' and pay if /when needed 30-40 quid for tech support?
The answer is simple.User experience. It doesn't matter what is under the hood, what matter is the hood.And as long any tinkering under the hood (linux) breaks the seems of the hood, it will not be a consumer solution (except in limited cases like the asus eee)
a) network cards (wifi) would not disaapear after upgrade (as it happened with ubuntu)
b) keyboard mappings would not messed up after some security upgrade (still not clear what exactly triggered this)
If I was not a young IT guy happy to tinker around, but in my 50s with a family, limited time would I have the luxury of spending 2-3 evenings (so far) to sort out the above? Let alone whatever else might come. Or would I get the 'consumer solution' and pay if /when needed 30-40 quid for tech support?
The answer is simple.User experience. It doesn't matter what is under the hood, what matter is the hood.And as long any tinkering under the hood (linux) breaks the seems of the hood, it will not be a consumer solution (except in limited cases like the asus eee)
Sunday 15 June 2008
The Giant on his knees...
from a user's perspective at least... I am talking about yesterday.First time ever that I have been unable to access Google. No email, no search, no Google documents. I did not spend much time into this, so I can't claim to have investigated the cause. In all likelihood it was related to something on my side of the ISP given that during the outage I could not get a DNS lookup for Google.
However unlike this
blog entry that suggests Google is down use Live Search instead, choice is a good things yada yada (something with which I fundamentally agree) the same can't be said for other services such as email or documents.
Perhaps Gears can help a bit with that or one could write a utility to mirror documents between Google docs and Zoho... Any volunteers?
However unlike this
blog entry that suggests Google is down use Live Search instead, choice is a good things yada yada (something with which I fundamentally agree) the same can't be said for other services such as email or documents.
Perhaps Gears can help a bit with that or one could write a utility to mirror documents between Google docs and Zoho... Any volunteers?
Monday 2 June 2008
Virtualisation... the only way
Visual Studio 2008:
Is not supported by SharePoint Solution Generator...
Is not supported by the compilation scripts for VirtualBox...
Having both 2005 and 2008 on the same machine is a nightmare at least...
Virtualisation, the only way (64bit and 8Gigs of RAM please)
Is not supported by SharePoint Solution Generator...
Is not supported by the compilation scripts for VirtualBox...
Having both 2005 and 2008 on the same machine is a nightmare at least...
Virtualisation, the only way (64bit and 8Gigs of RAM please)
Sunday 16 March 2008
The wind of change...
is blowing across the capital of the UK and takes with it all the historic music venues. Next weekend is the last weekend for TurnMils, and by the end of the year Astoria will go too. How many bands and concerts have they played there ? How many memories ? The vast majority of the gigs I have been to London were held in Astoria.
Maybe super-duper mega venues like O2 arean are the way to go . At least facilities wise. As for retro / emotion / underground /real that is a different story.
Maybe super-duper mega venues like O2 arean are the way to go . At least facilities wise. As for retro / emotion / underground /real that is a different story.
Thursday 21 February 2008
I am ... accessible...
says a web site. But what is the actual level of accessibility and how can this be measured? Well the following tools should help:
Monday 18 February 2008
Crossing to the other side...
After many years of being a customer of source forge I crossed over to the other side: codeplex. What can I say, goodies for SharePoint. Some promising ones below:
01) MOSS Faceted Search
02) SharePoint Visual Studio Project Templates
03) SharePoint Solution Installer
04) A Google Mapcontrol for ASP.NET and MOSS or Sharepoint WSS3 as a webpart
05) Predefined Search for MOSS2007
06) Accessibility Kit for SharePoint
07) SharePoint Developer Explorer
08) SharePoint 2007 Wildcard Search
09) 3-tier application design in wss 3.0 or MOSS 2007
10) PowerShell SharePoint Provider
11) SharePoint Builder
12) Project Compliance Audit
13) SharePoint AJAX Toolkit
Furthermore, Microsoft has released a number of very useful tools and docs:
01) MOSS Faceted Search
02) SharePoint Visual Studio Project Templates
03) SharePoint Solution Installer
04) A Google Mapcontrol for ASP.NET and MOSS or Sharepoint WSS3 as a webpart
05) Predefined Search for MOSS2007
06) Accessibility Kit for SharePoint
07) SharePoint Developer Explorer
08) SharePoint 2007 Wildcard Search
09) 3-tier application design in wss 3.0 or MOSS 2007
10) PowerShell SharePoint Provider
11) SharePoint Builder
12) Project Compliance Audit
13) SharePoint AJAX Toolkit
Furthermore, Microsoft has released a number of very useful tools and docs:
- System Center Capacity Planning
- SharePoint Capacity Planning
- SharePoint Deployment Guide and Checklists
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