This week:
Green Zone
Review:
Anger-inducingly true, even if it is (at times) like watching Poirot with rocket launchers. Excellent.
Saturday, 20 March 2010
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Thursday, 11 March 2010
Seamlessly blending in...
Many thanks to a work colleague for this (because frankly I wouldn't be seen dead watching the local news round here).
Yesterday's 'Points West' local BBC news report contained a short segment from a field in Gloucestershire, where lots of tubby-looking brickies are shoddily throwing together a huge new army base for the headquarters of the Nato Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (all the details are available here should you be deeply bored).
As part of the segment numerous senior army personnel were interviewed, sternly telling us all (well the 17 people watching at the time) about married couple's quarters, vehicle docking bays and single soldier's room space. There was also an excellent contribution in the new 500-seater briefing room from a Colonel Charles Turner, shown below:
That's right, you are looking at a man in a camouflage jacket.
And a high-visibility reflective jacket.
At the same time.
Um, it's either/or mate. Trust me.
Yesterday's 'Points West' local BBC news report contained a short segment from a field in Gloucestershire, where lots of tubby-looking brickies are shoddily throwing together a huge new army base for the headquarters of the Nato Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (all the details are available here should you be deeply bored).
As part of the segment numerous senior army personnel were interviewed, sternly telling us all (well the 17 people watching at the time) about married couple's quarters, vehicle docking bays and single soldier's room space. There was also an excellent contribution in the new 500-seater briefing room from a Colonel Charles Turner, shown below:
That's right, you are looking at a man in a camouflage jacket.
And a high-visibility reflective jacket.
At the same time.
Um, it's either/or mate. Trust me.
Thursday, 4 March 2010
One second, Mr Marketing sir....
I have a confession to make. I am the progeny of someone involved in advertising.
Please don't hit me.
In fact, not only did my father have his own successful advertising agency in London for twenty years, but my sister works high up enough in the european advertising industry that my niece was a total brand snob by the age of two.
Until you've been put down by a toddler for wearing the wrong brand of trainers then you've never lived frankly.
Anyway, the point is that I've grown up around the culture of object deification and opinion manipulation for long enough that it's all second nature to me now. This makes it all the more amusing to me when you see a real clanger.
For example (bear with me here), I was at an industry seminar yesterday on 'Enterprise Social Networking' and 'Advanced Collaboration using Cloud Computing'. I know, gringeworthy buzz-word heaven.
(My favourite of the day was 'a synergy of hybrid cloud/on-premise collaboration technology'. Class.)
Cloud computing, if you don't already know (and if you don't then you read it here first and can thank me when it takes over the world in a few years), basically means using your software on-line. As in rather than having Excel installed on your computer it would be hosted somewhere else in the world and you'd interact and work using your browser with something that looks exactly like Excel. In short, you rent the software as a service. It's the future of application development and the big players have invested hundreds of millions of pounds on setting up their services.
The two biggest movers in the cloud industry are Lotus and Microsoft. Microsoft are slightly ahead having spent huge sums on their data centers around the world, and Lotus are trying hard to catch up.
The Lotus offering to the sacrificial god of The Cloud is called LotusLive and is rapidly being hammered together with a welding torch and a rivet gun. It might be ready soon. Maybe.
The Microsoft entry into The Cloud is called Windows Azure. Azure, it just slides smoothly off the tongue doesn't it? Azuuuuuuuuure. It's silky, it's classy, it's so good their marketing department has registered it as a trademark.
One small problem.
Azure means 'the colour blue of a cloudless sky'.
Marketing Men nil, Dictionary one.
Please don't hit me.
In fact, not only did my father have his own successful advertising agency in London for twenty years, but my sister works high up enough in the european advertising industry that my niece was a total brand snob by the age of two.
Until you've been put down by a toddler for wearing the wrong brand of trainers then you've never lived frankly.
Anyway, the point is that I've grown up around the culture of object deification and opinion manipulation for long enough that it's all second nature to me now. This makes it all the more amusing to me when you see a real clanger.
For example (bear with me here), I was at an industry seminar yesterday on 'Enterprise Social Networking' and 'Advanced Collaboration using Cloud Computing'. I know, gringeworthy buzz-word heaven.
(My favourite of the day was 'a synergy of hybrid cloud/on-premise collaboration technology'. Class.)
Cloud computing, if you don't already know (and if you don't then you read it here first and can thank me when it takes over the world in a few years), basically means using your software on-line. As in rather than having Excel installed on your computer it would be hosted somewhere else in the world and you'd interact and work using your browser with something that looks exactly like Excel. In short, you rent the software as a service. It's the future of application development and the big players have invested hundreds of millions of pounds on setting up their services.
The two biggest movers in the cloud industry are Lotus and Microsoft. Microsoft are slightly ahead having spent huge sums on their data centers around the world, and Lotus are trying hard to catch up.
The Lotus offering to the sacrificial god of The Cloud is called LotusLive and is rapidly being hammered together with a welding torch and a rivet gun. It might be ready soon. Maybe.
The Microsoft entry into The Cloud is called Windows Azure. Azure, it just slides smoothly off the tongue doesn't it? Azuuuuuuuuure. It's silky, it's classy, it's so good their marketing department has registered it as a trademark.
One small problem.
Azure means 'the colour blue of a cloudless sky'.
Marketing Men nil, Dictionary one.
Monday, 1 March 2010
I'm awake!
I am still kicking, I've just been incredibly busy recently. Mrs RS has now moved in but is rather ill (for reasons that I don't need to go in to) and will be for a couple more weeks. So my time has been spent looking after her or working.
I'll be back properly soon. Once I've read the 130+ posts in my google reader.
So probably around May then.
Anyway, one thing has been resolved - both Mrs RS and I agree that we never want children. I suspect her reasoning revolves around not pushing a watermelon down her birth canal, but mine definitely revolves around the vastly over-crowded planet we live on. I did have a nice, reasoned post about birth rates (over 300,000 babies are born every day - more than were wiped out in the horrific Haiti earthquake), total population (even if overnight the world limited each woman to just two babies then the total population will still peak at over nine billion. Imagine the current world with over two billion extra people in it - it'll happen in our lifetimes) and the impact on the planet.
And then I saw this and figured he could just say it all for me:
Frankly, how can you not love someone who's catchphrase is "I'm Doug Stanhope, and that's why I drink." :)
I'll be back properly soon. Once I've read the 130+ posts in my google reader.
So probably around May then.
Anyway, one thing has been resolved - both Mrs RS and I agree that we never want children. I suspect her reasoning revolves around not pushing a watermelon down her birth canal, but mine definitely revolves around the vastly over-crowded planet we live on. I did have a nice, reasoned post about birth rates (over 300,000 babies are born every day - more than were wiped out in the horrific Haiti earthquake), total population (even if overnight the world limited each woman to just two babies then the total population will still peak at over nine billion. Imagine the current world with over two billion extra people in it - it'll happen in our lifetimes) and the impact on the planet.
And then I saw this and figured he could just say it all for me:
Frankly, how can you not love someone who's catchphrase is "I'm Doug Stanhope, and that's why I drink." :)
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