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What’s Your Pointless Obsession?

What’s your pointless obsession? It’s got to be pointless and yet take up lots of time that really you would be better spent working in a soup kitchen or raking the leaves. Mine is PIM (and I am not talking about the drink).

What’s your pointless obsession? It’s got to be pointless and yet take up lots of time that really you would be better spent working in a soup kitchen or raking the leaves.

Mine is Personal Information Management. Somebody invented the concept of PIM and they set in motion a train that would mean I would spend hours searching for ways to the same thing over (and over) again. The goal is, as always, a reasonable one: to synchronise calendar & address information between the office and home (including my Treo using different calendars. It should, in theory, be easy but it’s not. I’ve moved the criteria recently to search for an online WAP-accessible calendar which means I could have a smaller, cheaper ‘phone than the Treo for times when it’s not really appropriate (or practical) to take it with me.

The plan was to use Yahoo Calendar as the gateway between home and the office – synchronising all – but it doesn’t quite work. I find the Yahoo-Outlook synchronisation causes too many errors when synchronising (although it’s fine to overwrite). Yahoo won’t synchronise my Palm Desktop at home (although it will sync with the Treo). I can export my Palm address book via a file upload to Y Calendar but the date book option fails every time. Yahoo Calendar’s WAP implementation works so it would satisfy that criteria if it would hook into everything else properly. I wonder if anybody really does use it or if it’s just a nice ‘we have’ gimmick?

Now, I’ve spoken about all this before. It’s pointless and really very unnecessary. I really can’t see my address book and/or calendar options are any more demanding than anybody else on the planet: I might be trying to be a little sophisticated with my use of them but I don’t think my uses are different – I’m just trying not to have multiple out-of-date copies of things. Of course, it’s a geeky thing to want and it’s frustrating that nothing out there does what I want.

But (in my best Points of View voice), why-oh-why do I choose this as my time consuming obsession? Am I alone?

Weekend Away

A weekend with my mum was a great deal of fun even if we had to pretend it was Christmas early!

I’ve spent the weekend with my mum at my parents’ house. PY was there for some of the time, but he came home yesterday while I stayed for most of today. My dad is working away, and she is off to join him for Christmas later this week, so, in effect, this was Christmas for us. I did eat Christmas pudding at the restaurant yesterday afternoon, but that’s about as far as I went (although the amount of food I have eaten means gym buddy will be very unhappy with me this week).

It’s been a very enjoyable weekend. When I sat down to write something, I was going to say much more. I was going to write, for example, about how I feel closer to my family now than I have done in the years since I moved south; how it felt like a proper adult weekend with no flashbacks to being a teenager again; or, simply, how much fun the whole thing was. Instead, I think I want to relax in the joy of it all.

UPDATE 14 December: My mum was worried about travelling alone for the first time in a few years. And, of course, everything was OK apart from the fact her luggage remained in London. Whenever either of my parents have taken connecting flights in recent years, one piece of their luggage is always left behind. I wonder if that says more about them or the airlines?

the Da Vinci Code

It’s very easy to get sucked into the world Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code.

You may recall that I love my pulp fiction and, on the train, I finished the latest and greatest thriller, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. I picked it up in a sale in a bookstore in one of those three-for-two offers. Amazingly, I had missed all the buzz about it and it was only after I had started to read it that I looked around to see half of the people on the train reading the same book. It’s certainly grabbed the attention of London commuters. Anyway, time to review it for Amazon as I haven’t been keeping those up and my ranking has started to slip!

It’s very easy to get sucked into the world of Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code. It’s a thriller from start to finish and one of those books that can have you hooked in just a few pages – you will be stealing yourself away to read the next chapter before you know it. Maybe you can see the blockbuster film or see the Ludlum or Grisham parallels but what makes this novel stand out from others is enormous amount of plot detail. Regardless of your opinion of Les Dossiers Secrets (or any of the premise behind the tale) the description of the artworks, relics and rituals in the novel is fascinating. Most importantly, however, the detail enhances the story rather than detracting from it. You may imagine that such vivid descriptions of paintings, churches or cryptology would slow the story-telling but the opposite is true: the finer points of this work add to the pace. It’s probably a novel you should re-read to see if you can decipher the codes when you know the answers and it’s certainly a novel that makes you want to delve into the history behind it. All in all, it’s a great suspense story that makes religious symbology entertaining.

Gary Lucy’s Birthday

Happy Birthday Gary!

happy birthday gary lucyReally, I should know better. The other day I spoke of the Man of the Moment project for the first time in a long time and the only request I have ever had to enter a male into Musak’s Man of the Moment project is to include Gary Lucy. Sadly, I haven’t got round to that yet (despite the fact he has been Musak’s calendar boy of 2004) but, I noticed yesterday was Gary’s birthday (I think he was 23) and so I dedicate today’s entry to the star of Hollyoaks, Footballers’ Wives and, recently, the ITV drama, She’s Gone.

Related from Listen To Musak’s Archives:

Perhaps I will make Gary Lucy Man of the Moment one day.

I Found Some Of Your Life

Interesting site with somebody’s photographs.

Alright, it might be months old but I never mentioned it!

I Found Some Of Your Life: In my possession is one memory card from a digital camera. This memory card was found in a taxi in New York City. I have no idea who the owner of the camera is.

Fascinating and slightly scary, don’t you think but interesting nonetheless. One of the more interestings possibilities resulting from the rise of digital photographs [via Photo Matt].

Maybe Hewlett-Packard’s “privacy protection system” for cameras would have been useful [via Tom].

Thanksgiving 2004

Happy thanksgiving to those passing by.

I trust all my American friends and colleagues enjoyed their Thanksgiving. In previous years I have looked at what Thanksgiving really is all about (see here) but this year I thought I would look how you were all celebrating by checking the Flickr tags. All the tags representing Thanksgiving seem to be about food or family – which I think seems like a pretty good notion to me.

Does Remote Storage Work

Is it possible to have the things I use regularly available on remote servers and never need to care about them myself?

Like many people I signed up for all the free web-based email accounts (RocketMail – now Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Hotmail etc.) but I never really used them. Over time I let most of the lapse and only really use Yahoo and – now – Gmail but I do not use any of them as my main mail account. I didn’t use them primarily because I didn’t want to pay to be connected to the web to read my mail (my POP accounts were better) and I wanted to maintain addresses at my own domain and – at the time – none of those interfaces allowed you to be seen as another mail address. Yahoo, of course, also provides photo storage, address books and calendars.

My web hosting company allows me to use my space as a virtual hard-drive (if I work out how to configure it) and – as I have noted – Flickr is becoming my personal choice for photographs (even though I could try and manage it myself on my own servers) while I use Bloglines for feed aggregation. So, the question is, can I now run my life using storage space away from my own computer?

Here are some of my considerations:

  • Outside of work (which I am not proposing to move) I have precious few documents so I don’t need masses of file space for them (I suspect my Yahoo account would happily cope).
  • Photos: I can’t get away from the lack of storage (even at Flickr) for them but I suspect it will cope with all the photographs I care about (the rest would only be archived to CD anyway).
  • Music: This is the difficult one as I upload music to my Treo’s mp3 player so I am not carrying it all around with me all the time (in a iPod style). Perhaps it is time to re-address that issue.
  • Mail: I have archives of mail in Mozilla Mail format. What I think I need is Mozilla’s roaming profiles but I have idea how they work.
  • Bookmarks: Ditto (but in the mean time Yahoo Companion bar and Yahoo Bookmarks should work).

Do you have any tips for me? Will it work? If it works I only need a reasonable internet connection to have my whole life on tap. What I really need is a proper method for synchronisation – but I’ve ranted about that before.

Celebrity T-Shirt Auction

If you’re a Dermot fan and use ebay, look out for The Big Issue Foundation’s celebrity auction on ebay from 29th November 2004 – 3rd December 2004.

You know how it is: there’s never enough time in the world. This year I haven’t had chance to put any effort into the Man of the Moment project but it was fun for a while and – maybe – I’ll find something to do for Christmas! Anyway, posted today on the Dermot O’Leary comments was a message I feel deserves a little more exposure:

If you’re a Dermot fan and use ebay, look out for The Big Issue Foundation’s celebrity auction on ebay from 29th November 2004 – 3rd December 2004. You can bid for a special ‘What’s Your Big Issue?’ T-shirt signed by Dermot, highlighting something important to him – over fishing! To take part go to http://members.ebay.co.uk/aboutme/bifceleb

All proceeds go to The Big Issue Foundation, the charity that offers support services to Big Issue vendors.

Other celebrities taking part include Ringo Starr, Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson, Tony Blair and Stephen Fry. Apparently, the cast of ‘EastEnders’ counts too.

Regent Street, London

What has this to do with Christmas?

regent street lights, lonfonChristmas is coming and I am a bit of a sucker for it but I have to say that the lights on Regents Street, London, do nothing for me. Perhaps I just haven’t seen them in the right conditions – a cold, damp, grey London afternoon is not conducive to enjoying the exterior lighting. It’s Disney tie-in with The Incredibles that alarms me. Sure, I see that Disney get the promotion and somebody gets some money for the lights but – really – what has it to do with Christmas? Or maybe it’s just that I missed Busted switch them on.

Kill Bill (Volume 2)

Rent Volumes 1 and 2 and unplug the ‘phone. You won’t regret it.

Continuing her quest for revenge, Uma Thurman is back as the unnamed bride in Kill Bill (Volume II). If you’d read my take on the first one then you would realise that I was destined to see this as quickly as Love Film would send it to me. The bride has several members of Bill’s gang of assassins (Deadly Viper Assassination Squad) to remove and she hits the ground running. This time, however, we learn a little more of the background to the trail of blood and we get to meet Bill himself. There is, perhaps, more emotion to this film (particularly in Uma Thurman’s part) than the first and the violence is, perhaps, less stylised and more realistic. I am truly amazed how much I have enjoyed both the Kill Bill movies and I will have to reassess my opinions of Tarantino’s work.

Rent Volumes 1 and 2 and unplug the ‘phone. You won’t regret it.

Another Grid Lock

Traffic From Hell would make a great name for a TV show. Have they already done that?

PY and I had some errands to run which partly entailed us driving to Heathrow airport. Then we went onto High Wycombe to do some shopping. And yet again we were stuck in traffic for hours. I think it may be time to consider alternative forms of transport. It seems no matter which way we go, south or north, we’re going to get stuck. Now I don’t enjoy being stuck in traffic but PY hates it and lets his frustration show. Maybe I should let him select the music from now on!

Evening In The City

If you’re in London you should have a least one drink in The Counting House.

I don’t often go out in The City of London (that’s the financial heart of London). I am a much bigger fan of hanging out in the the West End – which is mainly where I have worked and socialised for all the years I have been here. I’ve just got back from a drinks with some colleagues in The Counting House – which is on Cornhill and a few seconds walk from Bank station. It’s a fabulous place full of character and ornate splendour (the domed roof is wonderful). Then we went for a curry and a decent Indian restaurant which was, unlike the ones on the West end, quiet at the end of an evening. The only downside on the evening: it was just a little harder to get home. I must do this more often.

Grid Lock

Traffic hell on the way home from a nice weekend on the south coast.

So I spent the weekend in Brighton: it was a fantastic idea for a last-minute getaway and I am really quite pleased that I went. The weather was cold and crisp but very sunny, and PY and I had a fantastic time roaming the shops, walking the pier, drinking coffee and doing all sorts of good things.

We left earlier this afternoon for the hour-long car ride home only to end up stuck in four hours of non-moving traffic at the end of the M23 (where it joins the M25). Sitting in a car, going nowhere, staring at the rear brake lights of the vehicle in front (and watching people dart from lane to lane to try to move 100 metres forward) was a very depressing way to end what had been, until then, a relaxing weekend. It’s such a shame our transport system means I am now more stressed than when I left the office on Friday night (it also means we’ve just eaten a stack of takeaway junk food, but that’s another story).

Maybe I should start looking forward to the week ahead