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walking west

Saturday, August 26, 2000

In answer to my own rhetorical question below: I stay in San Francisco two weeks longer. And I have a room! Yee-haa! And for only about twice the rent of a whole three-bedroom house in Canberra, Australia's second-most-expensive rental market after Sydney. But that's the way it is in Dot-Com-Land.

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Bloody Olympics. I knew they'd come back to haunt me. I was lucky enough when we were booking our trip to get a flight back into Sydney at the end of September (but then it will be a couple of days before I can fly back down to Canberra, when normally I'd have to wait only a couple of hours). Now I'm in a position where I could get a really good place to stay for the next month if only I could leave SF one day later, because the people in this place will be going away for a while and returning a few hours after I am due to fly out. And, you guessed it, Qantas is booked solid between the US and Sydney until mid-October.

So do I stay two weeks longer in SF to get a good place to stay, or stick with the original flight and maybe have to stay in some pretty ordinary hotels to get a reasonable weekly rate? And even they're hard to get into, because it's the beginning of the school and college year. At this rate I'll end up in the Tenderloin, the dingiest part of downtown SF. Curse you, Baron de Coubertin! [Shakes fist at sky in Snoopy-like manner.]

(Hey, I didn't know de Coubertin's real name was Pierre de Fredy. That's a beauty.)

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Last night it took me five hours to get from San Francisco back to my friends' place in San Jose. That's an average of ten miles an hour.

The first couple of those were on the CalTrain, a pleasant ride in the last hours of daylight through South San Francisco, San Mateo, Palo Alto, et alto. Then I got a phone-call from Jane and sat outside San Jose Diridion station for an hour talking to her in the cool evening air, until the next train pulled in behind me and blasted my cellphone with electromagnetic radiation. Then at 9.20 I caught a bus.

And sat on the bus as it drove out into the burbs. And sat on the bus. And sat on the bus. And realised that the bus was driving back into downtown San Jose, and that I'd missed my stop, because they all look the same in the dark when you don't know the place very well. So I spent an hour going in a big circle and had to go all the way back out again, much to the driver's amusement.

My friends had been worried, wondering where I was, because I hadn't been able to call them to tell them what I'd done—having drained the battery on the phone with the earlier call. (My first big test of cell-phone ownership, and I blew it.) It was like being sixteen all over again, and coming home to concerned parents. Oops.

Insert Moral Here.

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Thursday, August 24, 2000

Now that I've got the cell-phone sorted out (and what a saga that was), I've posted my job profile to Dice and other sites of that ilk. If by some amazing coincidence you're an employer in the Bay area reading this and would like to see my online resumé, by all means drop me a line.

I've also been perusing Craig's List to find a place to stay in San Francisco during September. Yes, time to move on from San Jose; two weeks will be long enough to impose on my friends here. If by some amazing coincidence you're a potential sub-lessor in San Francisco reading this and would like to see a tall 32-year-old Australian male (non-smoking, no pets) move into your spare room for a month from next Thursday or Friday, by all means drop me a line.

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Wednesday, August 23, 2000

I've just been reflecting on my comment below that Blogger's permalink numbers are sequentially-generated. That means that there have been twice as many posts to Blogger in the three months since my first post as in the previous nine months of its existence. Man. That's exponential growth. No wonder their servers are starting to stall now and then.

You know what this means, of course: by the end of the year every human being on the face of the planet will have a weblog. That's six billion people posting about how they can't get CSS to work properly, what they just saw on CNN, and what they would give to get a link back from Jason. (In Mandarin and Hindi, yet. He won't know what's hit him.)

I think I'll depart quietly from the scene before that happens, and go back to what I was doing before.

But not yet. There's a story to finish first.

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Apparently, Web Design <> Art. To prove it, visit SelectSmart's Which Job is Right For You? quiz, answer 'no preference' to all six questions, and view the results: top choice, Artist; bottom choice (out of 25), Web Designer. (I'm not sure if artists should feel flattered or offended.)

I've tried several different permutations and can't get Web Designer higher than number ten. Seems that web design is the right job for nobody. That must be why nobody wants to do it.

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Damn, they stole my scoop :)... two minutes after I posted the message below, Ev posted a birthday announcement on the main Blogger site. Okay, so you can't see the time I posted my message, but trust me, it was [8/23/2000 1:21:02 PM | Rory Ewins]. Hang on, I can prove it: its sequentially-generated permalink number is 694776, and theirs is 694798! Aha!

(Yes, I know it's actually a coincidence. Just wanted to point out that I wasn't being blind when I said that they hadn't made a fuss about it on their site.)

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I'm surprised they haven't made a big fuss about it on their site, but Blogger, the cause of a thousand posts on the weblogs of the world saying 'Hey, this Blogger thing works', turned one year old today: its existence was announced this time last year in the Pyra fora. So happy birthday, Blogger (even if it does seem a bit cute to anthropomorphize a piece of software).

What's even more amazing is that it's still free. How do they do it? Do the Pyra team have some kind of mysterious behind-the-scenes figure paying the bills and calling the shots? Are Derek, Matt, Jack and the rest a latter-day Charlie's Angels? All the more perplexing considering that DeepLeap has just gone belly-up for want of funding.

(No, I don't have Blogger's birthday marked in my diary. That would be unspeakably sad. I just happened to be looking in the old Pyra discussion forums today for something else, and saw the original announcement.)

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Seems that even Internet Rockstars find Space Channel 5 totally addictive, like me. How can you top a game that combines funk, techno, retro colors, Japanese animation, science fiction, TV ratings battles, monsters shaped like multi-limbed blancmanges, and grooooovy dancing? No, Ben Brown doesn't know either.

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Time to bite the bullet and start using some server-side includes in this weblog. Links to the archives are now tastefully arranged down the right-hand side of the page.

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Tuesday, August 22, 2000

Oh man. I'm just now listening to the Dandy Warhols' Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia for the first time, and it's every bit as excellent as their first two albums. Portland 13, Rest of the World Nil.

But what on earth is that 635K jpeg doing on the front page of their website? Puh-lease! Such a cop-out. Why can't they wrestle with CSS layout problems like the rest of us?

And how about a bit of proof-reading, guys: 'Love is knowing the diffenece between someone who wants you or just someone who wants you to want them.' Diffenece? Someone's experinecing a mild state of confuiosn here, people.

(I love playing the pedant.)

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American readers, forgive me; I like your country (after all, I'm hoping to move here), but I have to ask: Why? Why do you like your food so sweet? Do you have some genetic difference from the rest of the human race, which means that you retain your extra sweetness tastebuds long after childhood when everyone else in the world loses theirs?

Case in point: Cinnabon. Now, I know this is an extreme example, even by US standards, but I simply cannot imagine this chain getting a foothold anywhere else in the world. I mean, I tried to keep my sugar-intake to a minimum by ordering the Minibon instead of the full, industrial-strength bon; only to be taken by surprise by the large Mochalatta Chill that came with it. This intense combination of coffee and chocolate brought two words to mind: supersaturated solution. If I hadn't seen them put the ice cubes in it, I would have sworn they were lumps of sugar that had crystallised out. And this is supposed to be enjoyable?

Further evidence: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I rest my case.

What I wonder is how American tourists cope with the food overseas. They must find it all terribly bland. 'That Black Forest Cake was okay, I guess, but it coulda used a bit more sugar. In a thick frosting. Over the top of the existing layer of frosting. With a side order of frosting to go.'

Of course, I may be biased, being from the home of Vegemite, that fine amalgam of salt, yeast, more salt, strange black greasy stuff (possibly also yeast; or concentrated Guinness), and yet more salt. Mm-mmm.

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A couple of months ago I mentioned that I was planning to buy a clockwork radio during my brief visit to South Africa enroute to Madagascar.

Well, I did manage to find some there, in an Automobile Association store at a mall—and nowhere else. But they were pretty bulky, so I held off on buying one before going to Madagascar, figuring I'd get one on the way out. Then, of course, I couldn't find an AA store in Pretoria, where Jane and I went between flights on the way out, and none of the people at regular hi-fi stores even knew what I was talking about. A clockwork radio? What's that? I found that odd, seeing they're made in Cape Town and exported all over the world (aid organisations buy them up big, apparently)... but then they're not exactly hi-fi. More the exact opposite. That's why I wanted one.

Fortunately, I found a London distributor via the web located in Tottenham Court Road, just near the British Museum, and so was able to pick one up there for only a little more than the SA price. It looks great, sounds great, and yes, the clockwork mechanism really works.

I mention this because this morning I saw another clockwork radio in the Oakridge Mall here in San Jose: the Philips AE1000 (sorry for the Norwegian, I can't find an equivalent page at their English language site). Smaller, made in China, and only thirty bucks, less than half the price of the Freeplay one. I assume (or at least hope) they've licensed the technology from the original inventor.

I like mine, though, because it was made in Africa, the ideal place for it. Still, it's great to think that this particular idea is spreading; think of what other small electronic items could run on clockwork instead of batteries—Freeplay already make a clockwork torch. Clockwork WAP phones? Clockwork razors? Clockwork watches? (No, that's just crazy.)

I have this mental picture of a Terry-Gilliamesque future where computers have shrunk in size and weight thanks to electronic paper or light-emitting plastic screens, but come with a big spring and winding-arm attached, so that a few cranks will power them for hours. Think of the benefits: no more power outages in Silicon Valley; no need to build new power stations to feed growing high-tech areas; and plenty of exercise for IT workers, some of the most desk-bound individuals in existence.

Of course, the downside (from the US point of view) is that the cutting edge in IT would shift from California to Switzerland.

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It seems that NTNON's Hedgehog Sandwich (see below) 'sold over 500,000 copies world wide and ... is still the BBC's most successful hit record'. Yet as far as I can tell there's been no CD release. So much for respecting your back-catalogue.

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(I just posted this to Funny Ha Ha, but what the hell, I'm putting it here too.)

This morning I was thinking, for some reason, about old Not the Nine O'Clock News records. Specifically, about the song 'All-Out Superpower Confrontation', and the sketch where Griff Rhys Jones is a lawyer who pronounces common legal terms incorrectly, such as 'gwilt' and 'aleebee'. Great stuff. Half a lifetime ago, my brother and I used to borrow their albums from the State Library of Tasmania and devour them whole.

There were a few albums, including the beautifully-titled double LP 'Hedgehog Sandwich'—all now long-forgotten, along with the early 1980s from whence they came. There may be some CD re-releases or compilations around, but I doubt they sell many copies. Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones are no longer the big comedy names they once were, nor is Pamela Stephenson; only Rowan Atkinson remains in the public eye, as Bean and Blackadder (and even those are now yesterday's news, the Millennium Dome Blackadder Back and Forth special notwithstanding).

This got me thinking about the longevity of comedy, and led to a startling realisation: Monty Python is going to rapidly diminish in popularity from here on because of the demise of the comedy LP.

To explain: I'm from a generation that discovered Python through their records, not through their television shows. Too young to have seen them on TV, yet a few years away from the release of their shows on video (which didn't happen until the late 1980s), my friends and I discovered Another Monty Python Record, Matching Tie and Handkerchief and the rest at the impressionable age of 16, and were soon amusing ourselves (and boring everyone else in earshot) by reciting our favourite sketches at every opportunity. As you do.

Years later, the shows came out on video, and even though I was past the tedious (dead-) parroting phase I watched them all, of course. There were certainly plenty of good new sketches to devour: if Scott of the Sahara's encounter with the electric killer penguin had been even one nanogram funnier I would have died on the spot. But I was also struck by how dated the show looked. (Well of course it did. It was 15-20 years old even then.)

Not really a problem for an established fan, of course. But I now wonder what a 16-year-old of today would think of Python if their first encounter was a viewing of those thirty-year-old TV shows. Would they be as taken with them as I and other 30-somethings once were? I'm not so sure.

There's something about sound recordings that strips away time in a way that video can't. It's probably because we're a visual species: eighty or ninety percent of our information about the world comes through our eyes. We notice that someone in an old 1970s TV show is wearing huge flares or sporting an afro before we hear what they're saying, and it's hard to take their words seriously as a result. Most 1970s TV shows can only be enjoyed as camp nowadays for that very reason. How long before the same is true of 1990s TV shows? (It's already happening with the 1980s. Watched any John Hughes teen flicks lately?)

But accents don't change as quickly as clothes, and a few dated words don't jar as much as the sight of an afro. An old Python record won't seem as comically old-fashioned, therefore, as a video of the TV show. If you're not English, then even the references to 1970s prices (less three decades of inflation) and public figures (since long-forgotten) won't matter, because they would have seemed strange and foreign to you all along.

The more I think about this, the more it seems true. A good test case is old Peter Cook and Dudley Moore records. I challenge anyone to find anything as funny and fresh as their 'Frog and Peach' sketch; in audio, it hasn't dated one bit. But watch a tape of the TV show and you'll be brought up cold by the early 1960s attire and, more to the point, the fact that they're in black and white. You can't help interpreting them as something from then, whereas listening to the records it's easy to forget that they aren't from now.

Comedy albums are, sadly, out of fashion nowadays. VHS and DVD capture more of the performance than a plain old record could, so it seems only sensible to release a TV show straight to video rather than editing and possibly re-recording it for audio-only. But as far as longevity of humour goes, this is a case where less is more. The parrot sketch will sound fresh for decades, but watching it you won't be able to stop noticing John Cleese's sideburns.

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Monday, August 21, 2000

Sometimes it only takes two words to make an irresistible link: leprosy haikus. (Via the forums at Something Awful, which I can see I'm going to have to visit more often.)

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fray day 4

I'll be there. In the right place at the right time, at last.

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An entertaining spin on the state of English in chatrooms. And for more chatroom fun, try The Bug Jar, which saves you all the bother of hanging out in chatrooms yourself.

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Interesting to read this perspective from another country on the IT brain-drain to the US. As one who is attempting to drain his own brain in that direction, this subject has certainly crossed my mind now and then. I think I'll write a bit about it here, but... not just yet.

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I'd tell you what I've been up to lately, but you really don't want to hear about my excursions to malls to buy shirts, pants, shoes, socks, and every other conceivable item of clothing. (The only clothes I had with me were my hiking-through-Madagascar, looking-pretty-feral-after-a-month, woulda-thrown-them-out-otherwise clothes. Somehow I don't think they'd cut it in a job interview.)

I'm also about to get a mobile phone. Sorry, a cell phone. (Must acclimatize, must acclimatize.) It's going to cost a fortune: fifty bucks for the cheapest phone (on special), thirty to sign-up, fifty for 500 minutes of calls in the first month, and $125 deposit because I don't have a US credit card (because those Australian credit cards are such a bad credit risk). That's with the only company that doesn't make you sign up for a one-year minimum. They don't make it easy for short-term visitors...

This will, in fact, be my first mobile cell phone ever. I've always avoided them before; not particularly because of the brain-tumor risk, more because I don't like the idea of being on-call 24 hours a day. (And this from someone who lives on the Internet.) I guess it's been my last defence against the erosion of privacy in the modern world... or maybe I am worried about brain tumors. It's my brain, dammit! Take that away, and what's left? Eighty kilos 175 pounds of used human-being and a new pair of 501s!

I guess there's always the off button. But that kind of defeats the purpose. I want all those potential employers to start flooding me with calls.

Still, cell phones seem pretty essential around here. To call San Francisco from San Jose using a regular phone costs 25 cents a minute (or twice that from a pay-phone), which is just insane. It's only fifty miles away! In London it cost a third of that to call Australia. (Hey, I've discovered the only thing that's cheap in London.)

Hmm, hang on: ($50 + $30 + $50) / 500 minutes = $0.26 per minute > $0.25 per minute.

Damn.

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You know what's really annoying? Discovering a really excellent video game at a friend's place and knowing you'll never be able to play it again because you're not about to buy a Dreamcast for one game.

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Old West