Greenbelt

View from 150ft

For the past month I've been working at the top of the tallest office on the sprawling business park I call 'work'. Next week I'm back to my regular ground-floor office. Here are the things I'm going to miss:

• Realising the warehouses on the horizon are in fact container ships gliding in to dock where the cranes scuttle back and forth, bowing their long necks before them
• The sun floodlighting the sails of the white windmill five miles away
• Watching the wind blow waves and ripples through cornfield next-door
• Having a grandstand seat when the thunderstorms bring their angry rain

I have been working too, but when your scenery changes it's always good to take a long look around.

(This entry was originally posted on the Greenbelt Blog.)

Arts , Greenbelt , Tech

Things That Delight Me About the Web, vol 382

I love the way you can stumble across a page written in a language you don't understand, and then there out of the middle of the foreign script comes a peculiar phrase that used to mean so much, that you wish you could read the context.

So anyone know what this Chinese site says about Fat and Frantic's "Last Night My Wife Hoovered My Head"?

The most I could get from the Babel Fish was "... this ... performance ... given name tune ... Housemartins ... is good ... Must".

(This entry was originally posted on the Greenbelt Blog.)

Tech

IT Sweatshops

From a 2001 proposal for a National Institute of Information Technology in Pakistan:

"We do not want Pakistan to become a country that the North uses for low-end, sweatshop software development.  The choice is between becoming a credible player in the IT world or merely being an IT slave for the West."

Question: is the IT industry about to undergo the same kind of radical reorganisation that shook up the textile industry in early part of the 20th century?

Greenbelt , Tech

Don't Do Broadband

Oh the shame of it. I had so many plans for this evening: letters to write, minutes to edit, work to complete. But before any of those, I thought I'd check to see if my broadband line had been enabled two days early - you never know.

I know now.

I now know that broadband is a drug and a time machine mixed into one. I've been exploring the corners of the Internet that I'd never bothered to visit before, and my exploring has swallowed my evening whole. I now know that although my employer's profitability is directly linked to broadband being a success, I must warn you: don't do broadband.

I can only hope that this beginner's enthusiasm wears off by tomorrow: I really should be a more productive member of society.

(This entry was originally posted on the Greenbelt Blog.)

Greenbelt , Personal

A Slow Weekend

I've sat in the same chair most of the day. It's grown dark now, but the front door is still wide open and I'm sat at my computer catching up on some writing I've been meaning to do for six months now. The pizza's gone, the wine's flowing there's a cool breeze and my thoughts are guided along by the random collage of sound effects, Elvis songs and news reports that is the KLF's Chill Out album.

This is a special kind of laziness... the kind Bank Holiday weekends were made for.

Next Bank Holiday weekend will be different. I'm best man at my brother's wedding, so I'll be chief delegator. Between now and then I have to think up a speech. I don't really feel like knocking him in the speech, but that seems to be the expected behaviour. Question: would it be a step too far to be nice, or is there a balance to be struck?

All these things and more I ponder as I lean back into the chair once more...

BTW, anyone with good stories about my brother, let me know ;)

(This entry was originally posted on the Greenbelt Blog.)