Did They Make It Up?

I swear some news is made up: A pair of Canadian otters brought to Britain a year ago are under 24-hour guard at the National Sea-life Sanctuary, near Oban in Scotland, because of fears they will be attacked by indigenous cousins unable to understand their “foreign accents”.

I swear some news is made up: A pair of Canadian otters brought to Britain a year ago are under 24-hour guard at the National Sea-life Sanctuary, near Oban in Scotland, because of fears they will be attacked by indigenous cousins unable to understand their “foreign accents”. [Independent]

Amazon A Go-Go

I love Amazon. They’re they way the world should do the online shopping experience. Then again, I hate Amazon. They keep recommending stuff I want so I buy it. But just now, I love them. I got my first two reviews published!

I love Amazon. They’re they way the world should do the online shopping experience.

Then again, I hate Amazon. They keep recommending stuff I want so I buy it.

But just now, I love them. I got my first two reviews published:

Start Up – Jerry Kaplan
Piloting Palm – Andrea Butter and David Pogue

Continue reading “Amazon A Go-Go”

Scooby Thoughts

Despite differing opinions, “Scooby Doo” is successful in entertaining

Scooby Doo Movie Poster, 2002
Scooby Doo Movie, 2002

Looking back, I do have to say Scooby Doo was a great film. If one of the goals of cinema is to entertain then this was a successful film. If another of the goals of cinema is to provide escapism then, again, this was a successful film. I believe I am the only person I know who thinks this. That, of course, makes me right and everybody else wrong (kind of).

In My Thoughts

My granddad was born on 1 July so it would have been his birthday yesterday. He died several years ago and I have to say that I miss him. I lit a candle at St Paul’s Cathedral on Sunday.

My granddad was born on 1 July so it would have been his birthday yesterday. He died several years ago and I have to say that I miss him. I lit a candle at St Paul’s Cathedral on Sunday. I just had the urge. I wonder why I did that? I am not the most spiritual person in the world nor am I the greatest believer. St Paul’s was so peaceful and relaxing I think I will go again. And it’s really beautiful inside – which is something I had never noticed before.

Shopping Madness

So, you would rather give me my money back than work with me to arrange delivery. Isn’t that rather short-sighted. Why would I ever shop with you again?

So, I try and buy a new power supply from a computer supplier (let’s say they are called Tell Computers).

Buy online and pay by credit card. They will only ship to credit card billing address. No problem I say, somebody will be there to pick it up and sign for it. Takes so long to arrive that nobody is there anymore. So, I think, I’ll have the courrier redeliver to work. They can’t change delivery address without Tell’s permission. OK, I say, somebody will be in on Thursday, please deliver it then. They try and deliver Friday.

No problem, thinks I. I will have them deliver one evening. “We don’t do evening deliveries,” they say. So I say, “I’m in Saturday”. “We don’t work weekends”. Huum.

“What about if I collect from your depot?”

“It a delivery centre with no collection point. Try calling Tell to have the address changed.”

“Hello Tell. Here’s my problem”

“Sorry, I’m in billing. Here’s customer service.”

“Hello Customer Service. Here’s my problem.”

“We can change the address. Oh, you bought online. You’ll need to speak to our Internet team”.

“Hello Internert Team. I have a problem and I’ve spoken to many people. I am assured you can help me.”

“No. We can’t change the address because you paid by credit card.”

“But here’s the problem. I am not at home during the day anymore. You don’t deliver evenings, weekend and you don’t have a collection point.”

“Can’t help you. Sorry.”

So I say, “I will have to send it back and have a refund”.

“Certainly Sir, no problem.”

“So, you would rather give me my money back than work with me to arrange delivery. Isn’t that rather short-sighted. Why would I ever shop with you again?”

“Sorry, that’s our policy. Somebody will call within the hour to confirm the refund”.

That was Thursday morning. Nobody has called.

Agggggggggghhhhh

Paris In The Summer

I have never been so hot while in meetings – which I think added to the sense of exhaustion by the time my head hit my pillow.

I don’t know what to think. I am so tired. I had a business meeting in Paris Monday. Travelled Eurostar. It’s usually fabulous. Up at 4.30 to make the 6.20 train was OK but the 18:16 return train was delayed by four (count them, 4) hours (sat on the train for 2 of them) and so I wasn’t actually back at my house until nearly 1am. 21+ hour day – now that’s what I call working. And I probably didn’t achieve very much!

Paris was baking. I have never been so hot while in meetings – which I think added to the sense of exhaustion by the time my head hit my pillow.

Have you ever thought how the internet is feeling (apparently, it has emotions). Right now, it’s looking The current mood of the Internet at www.imood.com (honest).

Welcome To Curnow.Org

And now they say go. My website has been online for a number of years (in fact, my first website was in late 1993 on the backend of the web servers of the company I was working for). Over the years I have kept up various parts of the site, taken others down and generally tended it like you would a garden that you let go “back to nature”. To be honest, I left it alone. Some of the more cringe-worthy stuff may be moved into this new look (but I doubt it) and my site devoted to pictures of satellite dishes has been, forever, lost (and, honestly, I am sad about that).

So it was time for a re-vamp. Time to do something different with my site and that’s when I decided that maintaining a site was hard work and there must have been an easier way. I had been experimenting with various Blogging tools for a year or so and never settled on anything I felt wholly comfortable with. Then, taking a walk down one of the web’s odder byways, I stumbled across Movable Type and decided that, if I was serious about making it easier to maintain my site more often, then this was the tool I was going to use. And so here we are …

I have now given myself the power to do this stuff quickly and efficiently. At last, I can update my site easily. But when it comes to the moment of truth I expect the next few entries to be pointless links to (vaguely) interesting stuff until such time as I find my voice again.

Update August 2008: You may have noticed that the site is no longer powered by Movbable Type. I’ve switched to WordPress which my hosting company, Dreamhost, updates automatically for me.

Why Do You Do It?

These are my ramblings and I can’t blame anybody else for the lack of interesting, entertaining or useful content. Still, it’s much more fulfilling than the static site with a few pictures of friends on it. It’s a place to vent, a place to keep things that I want to be reminded of in the future (or remember to do tomorrow). In my head it is some kind of journey that I have embarked on and don’t know where it will finish (but that’s what life is). In the grand scheme of things, however, it is an utterly pointless exercise.

I wrote these words about why I have a web presence sometime back in around 2000. At the time as I running an incarnation of my web site that has long since vanished. I started building a personal site for myself at the back-end of 1993 when HTML mark-up first hit the scene and I had very little to do while working the night shift.

Over time, of course, many things have changed. A couple of years ago the craze we know as blogging planted small roots but grew quickly. Drowning, as I was at the time, at an internet advertising company I toyed with, but never fully developed, the concept of my blog. I played with blogger and thought of all the great site management uses it had (at one time I worked for a company that built a large, complex site with almost no concept of a content management system). Still, I kept a small site at curnow.org and thought nothing more of it.

When the internet business went into free-fall and I, fortunately, remained in gainful employment I once again investigated a blog. I thought that the hard times that faced the industry were worth documenting and I tried but soon tired of the project. So I turned the blog into a personal journal (rather, weblog) and updated it daily. It did not, however, live under the curnow.org URL. Daily updates, of course, are beyond many of us and, again, I gave up.

Of course, the logical progressions is to what it has become today – an oft-updated collection of thoughts and ramblings (akin to drunken conversations in a pub, but without the sickening “what did I say” feeling the next morning). Without the self-imposed pressures of trying to do something daily, it’s a much better experience (from the author’s side).

So, what is it?

It is, of course, a personal site. These are my ramblings and I can’t blame anybody else for the lack of interesting, entertaining or useful content. Still, it’s much more fulfilling than the static site with a few pictures of friends on it. It’s a place to vent, a place to keep things that I want to be reminded of in the future (or remember to do tomorrow). In my head it is some kind of journey that I have embarked on and don’t know where it will finish (but that’s what life is). In the grand scheme of things, however, it is an utterly pointless exercise.

It is a weblog (rather than a journal) for I comment on things that interest me. Some of those things, obviously, are directly to do with my life but, most content, is not a diarised version of my life. I have seen journals and web logs referred to a mini-soap operas before. You can see into somebody else’s life. Well, I don’t think curnow.org will do that for you. It may give you an idea of what is in my mind right now, but then there are many things that I don’t comment on, so I suspect anybody reading this will get a wholly unrealistic picture of Jon Curnow. My favourite journals and weblogs are listed in the Give Us Our Daily Blog entry.

It’s pointless then?

Despite what I said above – not really. If you didn’t read the link at the top of the page, do so now (I’m too lazy to copy the text and my impression count goes up). I think there is a great power in personal publishing. This is my little contribution.