On The Road

Words of Advice to a Friend

Just left this comment on a friend's blog. He's just sold the business he started way back at the start of the whole internet thing. It's the first time that I've really written anything in public about my .com disaster. I'm still suffering from the end of the last millenium.

Jon - some words from experience. Remember, I started you off on this whole thing. Congratulations, you did something amazing and will go on to do lots more.
I would strongly advise this - take six months off, sit around and do things you enjoy, think about the world, talk to people, if you have some money, stick it somewhere safe and don't _invest_ any of it. After six months the world will still be there and the opportunities will be there, but you will have a better perspective on it all.
When I sold NetNames I was already working on my 'incubator with a difference'. I went straight from one to the other without even a week off (well, my second child had just been born, I was worried that I'd end up at home looking after her while my partner carried on working, I was desperate to get on with things that had been in my mind for years, I had loads of money and the online world was moving at warp speed, etc, etc).
The upshot of it all was that I dived far to swiftly and deep into new projects which then blew up in my face taking all my money with them. I'm still trying to find a way out of the mire that I got myself into.
I'm sure you won't do anything of the sort, but I would take a world cruise or something, get away from broadband and relax, let the last ten years shake out of your bones, let the ideas that really matter rise to the top - then choose a way forward.
Most of all, enjoy!

The Anarchists

HTML Giant asked:
 A book you borrowed, never returned (not innocently or forgot; you damn well know it), still own (love?). Your chance to disclose.

I answered:
In 1979 as a teenager from Tunbridge Wells Public Library I stole James Joll's The Anarchists. It was an act of propaganda by the deed and I am still proud of my youthful self for such farsightedness. I can't imagine anyone else in that stuck up town ever wanted to read it (not quite true, I can trace how often it was borrowed from the stamps in it, eight times between 1975 and 1977. I dip into it regularly, Kropotkin is still my favourite.

HTMLGIANT

Epic journey

Once, when I lived in London, I travelled to the far north (Chingford) and bought an old London taxi cab from a lovely family who had been using it as a people transporter. I drove it back home to Camden through the winter evening rush hour. En route the windows steamed up and I ended up peering through a tiny clear spot as the windscreen wipers clanked and the heating system moaned and the heavy diesel engine growled. With its ancient dashboard and switchgear I began to believe  I was flying a Lancaster bomber back across the channel following a bombing raid on Germany. Or something.

Anyway, reading this epic story of a very long distance bus collection from TRANSIT ANTENNA brought it all back to me again.

I Can't Believe It's Not War

Baudrillard, you should be living at this time
You know, Baudrillard took a lot of flak for writing that the Gulf War did not take place. It seems to me that there is another war currently not taking place - the Afghan war. Over the last week or so we've been fed an endless stream of repo...rts about a major offensive that is going to take place soon. This morning I turned on my radio to hear that this major offensive that is going to take place soon is on the verge of taking place. I have no doubt that in a few weeks we'll be told about this major offensive that has taken place and all the success that it brought.
It seems to be the opposite of actual war, where you announce through the media what you are going to attempt, making sure that the media (and your enemy) understand your story and your objectives before you even attempt them. This is not actual war, this is war as media event.

Talking to the vegetative

I have a short story that revolves around somebody in a persistent vegetative state.
Suddenly I may have another story - about a conversation via a scanner. Or maybe it works with the existing story.
Amazing news from another planet.

Vegetative state patients can respond to questions

The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which shows brain activity in real time.

They asked patients and healthy volunteers to imagine playing tennis while they were being scanned.

In each of the volunteers this stimulated activity in the pre-motor cortex, part of the brain which deals with movement.

This also happened in four out of 23 of the patients presumed to be in a vegetative state.

Why does the BBC promote Glastonbury so heavily?

I always wondered why the BBC put so much effort into coverage of what is a commercial event that makes millions for the owners. Now maybe we'll find out.

BBC News - BBC Glastonbury and Wimbledon spend scrutinised

BBC Glastonbury and Wimbledon spend scrutinised
Jo Whiley
The BBC sent 407 staff to cover Glastonbury last year

The National Audit Office (NAO) is due to publish a report looking at how much the BBC spends on covering major sporting and music events.

The corporation reportedly spent £1.5m sending 407 reporters and technical staff to cover the Glastonbury music festival last year.

In 2008, it sent 437 staff to cover the Beijing Olympics.

The NAO said the report would look at whether the BBC provides value for money with its coverage.

When olives and almods felt like dirty words

Joe Moran's blog: The winter of '47

It was Britain’s worst winter of the last century. Stranded by a blizzard in a Trust Houses hotel in Ross-on-Wye in the middle of February 1947, a 33-year-old Elizabeth David felt an “agonised craving for the sun”, remembering the wartime years she had spent in India, Egypt and Greece. The hotel served dismal meals, “produced with a kind of bleak triumph which amounted almost to a hatred of humanity and humanity’s needs”. In a state of fury about this terrible, cheerless food (she regarded postwar rationing and shortages as no excuse), David began to write down sensuous descriptions of Mediterranean cuisine – although she later said that in England in 1947 “olives” and “almonds” felt like dirty words. In 1950, some of these words ended up in her first published work, A Book of Mediterranean Food.

my next book but one

Subject for my next book but one.

YouTube - Scientology: The Shrinking World of L. Ron Hubbard

Compared to Libya's little bit of semtex ...

If people seriously think they should sue Libya for supplying semtex to the IRA which then made bombs which injured said people, maybe we should think about taking a class action against the US (and Italy and Russia and Germany and of course the UK). How much of the $37.8 billion of arms that the US supplied do you think ended up being used in situations where civilians were killed, maimed or injured?

Despite Slump, U.S. Role as Top Arms Supplier Grows - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a new Congressional study.

The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before.

Italy was a distant second, with $3.7 billion in worldwide weapons sales in 2008, while Russia was third with $3.5 billion in arms sales last year — down considerably from the $10.8 billion in weapons deals signed by Moscow in 2007.

Pinochet purges arrests ordered

129, write it in blood

A Chilean judge has issued arrest warrants for 129 people for allegedly helping to purge critics of former ruler General Augusto Pinochet.

The suspects - the largest group so far to face arrest warrants - all worked for the secret police agency, Dina.

They are accused of taking part in killings and disappearances of dozens of leftists and opposition activists.

Since Gen Pinochet left power in 1990, arrests of his agents have been frequent - often dividing opinion.

The warrants also name dozens of former military and security officials who had never faced charges before.