'Necessity governs the world'

I found this quote on a website just now and thought it was an interesting point. Apparently it's something mentioned by Machiavelli, although don't let that put you off:

This is a thought that finds great expression in The Prince and is scattered throughout his work. At first glance it might seem rather obvious, but for Machiavelli it goes to the heart of everything. When you feel necessity biting at your heels, you are moved to respond in some way that is creative. It is either that or die. When you do not feel necessity, your actions lack purpose, your spirit wanders, you grow fat and dependent.


This pressure from the environment does not have to be material poverty. It can be something psychological. You feel unhappy with the world around you and compelled to change something about it or yourself. This dissatisfaction is constant and it focuses your energy.

So now consider these situations..


At work - you feel frustrated by politics and clueless colleagues, and start wishing you worked somewhere else. But what if your next job doesn't challenge you to do better and you get 'fat and dependent'.


The current war - the West is there to fight based on ideals, but for the people who live there it's life or death of their deep held beliefs.


Modern life - with people living in their cosy world of modern, affordable luxuries, there's no pressure to make things better or challenge the status quo.


I think you could apply it to understanding a lot of other things too.

Christmas Cracker

A cracking Christmas it was this year, and I've got the photos to prove it! Click on the photo of me wearing my snazzy new coat that I got for Christmas (thank you Diana!) to see them all...

Christmas time

First it was Mum and Dad here for thanksgiving, then Irv and Sharon for a few days this week - we've had a full house recently! It has really lended to the seasonal cheer to have family and friends around, and it's been great having the company. Now we've got to race arond getting Christmas presents sorted out, this time of year seems so busy! I'm starting to 'get' Thanksgiving, although I haven't shook the feeling yet that it's a piece of Christmas come early.

Marketeers are incredibly PC about Christmas, in fact you will rarely see an advert that mentions Christmas specifically because they don't want to offend the people for whom it's not the Christmas season but actually Hannukah, Kwanzaa, or something else. We've recently done Christmas-time ads at work with the customary non-offensive 'Happy Holidays' and 'Holiday Season' type messages, and I find them very unsatisfying. For me, growing up in Britain, Christmas is:

Christmas Trees
Santa
Mistletoe and holly
Gifts
Family
Friends
Parties
Tasty food
Advent calendars
Panettone
Liebkuchen
Pretty lights

If you're not talking about Christmas, none of the symbols of it can appear in your ad either. It gets a little tricky...

So what's the big deal? My best guess is that American Christians tend to be more outspoken than most about the True Meaning of Christmas, thereby forcing others to deny it. For the rest of the world I rather like how the religious meaning is forgotten and people just enjoy it as an extension of New Year festivities and a great time to celebrate with family and friends. Tons of countries around the world celebrate Christmas but don't get hung up on the religious part, it's a shame it can't happen here. Hmm.. next step.. put this question to a couple of colleagues who have declared that they 'don't celebrate Christmas'. They didn't say 'bah humbug' so I'm assuming they have a religious belief behind this...

Waffles from Balthazar

A staple of brunch menus over here is the Belgian waffle with fresh fruit. It always sounds fantastic but never works for me in practice - somehow the fresh fruit just doesn't work with the waffle, as much as you would hope it would. Recently when Diana and I were in NYC we went to a brunchable cafe called Balthazar, which felt like a little piece of France transplanted in America. She had the eggs benedict, which were very good, and I decided to risk the waffles with fruit, hoping that a place like this would know how to do it.. and they did! Instead of the chopped fresh fruit you'll normally get in DC, they made a warm compote of the fruit, which went perfectly with the waffle. It was also mostly berries from what I remember - no melons or pineapple that I think clash horribly with the waffle texture. So in future, I'll look for a warm compote and never again a fresh fruit salad!

new laptop - hee heee!

OK, time for a bit of gloating! I had been boring Diana with talk about getting a replacement laptop for months, and then a week or two ago my PowerBook started acting up quite badly, clearly a Sign that action needed to be taken. (if you watch Run's House, you'll see the parallel with the time he got a postcard from the Lamborghini dealer and saw it as a Sign to go buy one)

Well, I spent about the same amount as last time on the PowerBook, but this time I got So Much More!!! It's a 20" MacBook - which means a big, beautiful screen (it's quite stunning). There's a built in webcam (you won't have to wait 5 minutes for me to plug everything in any more), usb 2.0 so that my ipod syncs in seconds instead of minutes, and the keyboard lights up in the dark. Did I mention that the screen is huge? You can get two webpages side-by-side on it, or edit photos and things in high resolution. I reaaaaaally love it. Here's a picture of me using it right now:

Audiobooks

I may have already mentioned that I listen to podcasts on the way to and from work, and what a great way it is to catch up on news (thanks Si for introducing me to the Guardian news podcast - much more entertaining than the BBC newspod). Well, recently I've enjoyed a couple of great audio books:

A Tale of Two Cities
Yup, the classic by Charles Dickens. Dad got me this for my birthday and it made many a drive home from work enjoyable. I'm actually tempted to listen to it again as it was a little difficult at times to follow all the characters. The story is a good one - very intriguing characters (and their secrets of course!) plus the backdrop of the French Revolution is fascinating.

The History Boys
This is a radio play of Alan Bennett's recently successful play. Can't say I've heard of it before but this one was very entertaining and well written, with intelligent themes and some very British characters...

People's History of America
Spurred on by the last two, I went shopping on iTunes for another audiobook. Unfortunately, although on the informative side, this one's turned out to be rather depressing. It's a catalog of government misbehaviour that would give you every reason to utterly distrust the people in power. I really knew that anyway, but the unrelenting tales about Vietnam, racism, discriminating against the poor, etc. are only palatable in small doses... next I think I'll go for something more light hearted

I was lamenting how little reading I do these days, so listening to these books has been really good. If you drive to work - or scoot even :-) - I would thoroughly recommend getting them on your CD player or iPod.

New podcast

I've made a podcast with a few little clips from our recent time in the UK, including our family get together to celebrate Si and Jo's engagement

Video Podcasts

Photos from Italy

Check out my bumper gallery of pictures from Viv and Giorgio's wedding, with extra pictures of Padova and Lazise.

Click here for Photo Albums

Nikka Costa

Can't remember if I mentioned this artist before but, having accidentally stumbled across Nikka Costa last year, I'm still listening to her album. She did a live set at Dream one time that we went there and I walked away thinking that actually the music sounded pretty good, not to mention the pleasant surprise of seeing someone on stage with an actual live band. Nikka Costa seems to have travelled through a time warp from the 70s and met Lenny Kravitz and Prince on the way, which is to say that she's funky, rocking and soulful with a great and somewhat crazy live act. Apparently she does count Prince as a mentor, and bizarrely enough her manager is Randy Jackson, the judge on American Idol. Well, I highly recommend her latest album if you want to try some new music...

washington weather - wee!

Summer has arrived in a big way now, with 90+ F temperatures daily. The warm evenings are so fantastic, and it feels to me like being on holiday. We're determined to get used to the high temperature this year, so Air Con is off except for occasional emergencies and we're actually doing pretty well at handling it. That said, it's definitely only for the leisure hours as the air con broke at work for one day this week and it was unbearable.

On a totally unrelated note, Diana was disappointed that I don't have a picture of my super-cool BMW on the blog (it'll come, eventually...) but what about our Infinit FX?! According to official tests, it out-performs the (also more ugly) Porsche Cayenne!

iPod update

Now that I'm driving to work you're probably wondering what happened to my video iPod, which gave me so much pleasure on the metro to my old job. I'm still watching the odd video show (it's mostly G4 video clips that are still worth a look for video game previews), but the good news is that the handy audio-in connection to my car's stereo means I can listen to podcasts on the way to and from work. I used to have quite a bit of spare time at my old job, which gave me a chance to read sites like Slashdot, The Register and Engadget. Now I'm keeping up on the same news through audio versions like Slashdot Review (read by someone who sounds like a cowboy) and the Engadget review. Add to that the CNN news update, NewsHour (never seen it on TV, but it's a good Rep v Dem discussion on the big issue of the week) and the BBC 'news pod'... and I'm probably more aware of current events here and at home than ever!

On a related note, one of my designers (joys of the new job - managing a team of designers) came back from London recently and was bursting with enthusiasm for the design of everyday British things like newspapers. She brought back a copy of the Guardian to show everyone, with it's new format and modern graphic design. In contrast, US papers are designed like British papers from several years ago and really lack when it comes to design flair (I won't even start on the quality of journalism...). After my last visit home (for Mum's birhday) I realised that although it's good to catch up on UK news through websites, I was really missing the overall experience you get when you pick up a British newspaper, so I'm now subscribed to The Observer digital edition, which comes as a facsimile of the print edition. So much better than time spent with the tedious Washington Post...

Plane shadow

Here's an odd thing I saw the other day. I was flying from DC to a place a little north of NYC in a small US airways jet for work. Looking out the window as we started our landing, I noticed the shadow of the plane against the clouds. Then I realised that through some trick of the light there appeared to be a (dare I say it) halo around the plane. The time was around sunset so probably something to do with that... take a look at this pic I took:

Job moves and my new car

Yup, Diana and I have changed jobs. Coincidentally, we're changing over within a week of each other. Diana's now working at BET.com which sounds like betting, but is actually the website for a TV channel here in the US (a sister company to MTV). I'm starting next week at Marriott.com and yes there is a friends and family rate that I'll be able to get for you...

As you can see from the .com on the end of both, we're staying firmly in our familiar territory of interactive and online. And my job is out in Bethesda (on the way to Rockville - remember that place?) so I'll be driving to work now. We were looking at Mini Coopers, but just couldn't stomach the plasticky interior (I'm not being picky here - the interior really is a big disappointment - shame because the rest of the car is fantastic) and ended up getting a BMW 325. Funnily enough Minis share the same base as the BMW 325, so the ride has a lot in common. The BM is way better built inside though, and the sat nav is very well done (v. important for me - I'm lost in DC without one). Probably a bit of an extravagence, but I followed Adam's sage advice to get the car I really want because when we have kids the choice won't be the same. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see which turns out to be our fave - the Infiniti (which we still love - a pure joy to drive) or the BM.

Kati's birthday pics

Hooray, I finally downloaded Kati's birthday pics, and you can see a selection on this page:

Kati's 5th Birthday Tea Party pics

V for Vendetta and Guy Fawkes

I've dragged Diana to two very good movies these last two weeks, and the evidence is that she's not complaining :-)

Last week it was Inside Man, which was an intelligent heist movie done through the style of Spike Lee - which means great characters from Denzel Washington and Clive Owen, and classic film storytelling without the MTV-style trappings that most Hollywood thrillers have these days. Some of the plot twists aren't that twisty but I reckon the real pleasure of this movie is in the characters.

This week it was V for Vendetta, which I also had pegged as an MTV-esque Hollywood action movie, but actually turned out to be a very though provoking and satisfying take on the fight against a totalitarian dystopia. I gather the plot was changed to make parallels with the current state of US politics (and very satisfying that was too!) but the action takes place in London and the character V styles himself on Guy Fawkes.

Diana learnt all about Guy Fawkes when she came to London so that she could understand the stuff we do on November 5th, but I've never known that much about him and always found it a bit odd that he's celebrated as a historic Briton (made the BBC's list of 100 greatest Britons, for example) when tried to blow up parliament (surely not a good thing?!). Wikipedia has helped me out a little - now I know that he was one of a bunch of Catholic terrorists (!) and when you read the rest of the 'Remember remember the 5th of November' poem it's all about giving the Pope a horrible death! Shades of Sept 11th...? Nowadays there's some kind of rosey-tinted view that he was actually a crusader against oppressive government, although it seems a confused notion to me. Can anyone help me understand??

New pics

Just a few - from the weekend and recently. Since the photocast doesn't seem to be getting to everyone I've gone back to the old way of webpages.

March 2006 - a few pics

How to get good service

Another good Guy Kawasaki blog, which touches on stuff that actually Diana taught me. I think reflects more of an American than a British viewpoint because US companies are more customer-centric. Even so, I've seen Diana put it to good effect in London, and the karmic scoreboard is a great attitude to have in general...

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/03/the_art_of_suck.html

On a positive note

I feel that I'm whingeing a lot about US culture at the moment, so here's a positive to try and balance things a tad:

Even with Tivo it's sometimes hard to find the good programming hidden away amongst the hundreds of TV channels that we get. So, I was very pleasantly surprised when I flipped channels this morning looking for some wake-up TV. I didn't have my contacts on, so really it was a foolishly impossible task as I couldn't see the channel names or numbers! After flicking through some sport and hispanic channels I caught a snatch of a favourite classical song (sorry - can't name it - I have some classical compilations on my iPod). I turned back and it turned out to be a kind of MTV for classic music, with accompanying arty music! A total breath of fresh air, and even more enjoyable once I stuck in my contacts! Unfortunately Tivo didn't seem to have listings info for that particular channel... will I ever find it again?!!!

St Patrick's Day

I'm quite bemused by the American celebrations of St. Patrick's Day. One of my colleagues congratulated me on wearing green (I just happen to be wearing a green shirt) and told me that he's Irish, even though he patently isn't. When I probed further he pointed out that his family from the 17th century was Irish. Ok...

All kinds of people have been asking me if I'm celebrating St. Patrick's Day, as if it's a national holiday (although it isn't). As far as I remember from England, St. P's is just an opportunity for people to head down the nearest pub and get smashed. Here, it seems to have taken the tone of just about every other public holiday I can think of. Is this a result of over-commercialisation or something?

I suppose that I just find it strange because I couldn't feel more distant from Ireland, yet they're making more of a deal out of it here... and in a strange PC way that seems to have lost the spirit of it. On the other hand, I guess it's more family friendly and kids can take part. Anything that means kids gain an appreciation of other countries and cultures - I'm all for.

Anyway...

I'll be making a lightning fast trip to England to wish Mum happy birthday and catch up with Viv. Diana's already there hanging out with work friends. Wish I had a job with limitless amounts of time-off to be taken...

Podcasts

Is anyone watching my podcasts? Seen the new one about snow in DC and Kati's tea party?

Now that I've had my video iPod a couple of months I can tell you (and I know you've been *dying* to find out) what my chosen (video) podcasts are. Drum roll...

Ricky Gervais - haven't subscribed to the pay version but probably will. This is one of a couple of audio-only podcasts that I listen to.

ABC World News Now - great update on news developments, and less parochial than the typical crappy TV news here (car accident on I-66, man shot in DC, etc.)

G4 shows - Attack of the Show, Cinematech and X-Play, for witty video game reviews

Gametrailers.com - this is a new one, and looking good so far, includes reviews too (surprisingly, Gamespot's podcast is terrible)

InDigital - out of work TV presenters doing a good gadget news podcast

Rocketboom - the original podcast show - interesting and sometimes cerebral content but patchy

NewsHour with Jim Lehrer - this is just audio: a good slice of political debate (and more like 10 minutes than an hour)

Sky News Seven Days - total junk, but it says that if the podcasts prove popular they'll put more news on the web!

KQED Gallery Crawl - monthly review of (mostly San Fran) art galleries, which makes for a nice arty break form the news and videogames

Cho Bo Ji - OK, this is a bit random and I doubt I'll keep listening, but this is a Buddhist monk here in the US who records his teachings. I was looking for an insight into Buddhism but a lot of it is gobbledigook...

Plus of course, I'm subscribed to my own fabulous video podcast in case I want to show peeps!

Speaking of Peeps, Easter is almost upon us. Diana's given up latte's for Lent and I gave up chocolate. It's a tough time but I'm sure we'll make it through...

Boondocks on my blog!

Watch an episode right here!!!!
So Google Video isn't so crummy after all...

'casting update

In case you're watching my photocast, I've had to change the address. I've also downloaded the bug fix to iPhoto that just came out, so there's a chance it will have better compatibility than before... can't promise though

http://web.mac.com/gordonbaty/iPhoto/photocast/index.rss

Boondocks

Let me introduce you to the best cartoon strip in America. I actually discovered it through the new TV series that's been developed from it, but I know Adam's had a feed for it on his website for a long time but the name sort of put me off. Boondocks means out in the country (as far as I understand it) so it doesn't really sum up the awesome cultural and political commentary that you get in the show. You may have to live in America to appreciate some of it, but I still recommend it.


Boondocks

You probably noticed that it's also written from a Black American point of view, which IMHO is something not heard enough around these parts. Considering how certain aspects of recent history are glossed over as 'civil rights history' and swept under the rug in the US, the more Boondocks the better.

Incidentally, the TV version is extra cool because it borrows its styling from Anime, and even has some really cool fighting scenes that are up there with what you'd see in Ghost in the Shell or Samurai Champloo (couldn't resist name-dropping those)!

First video cast!

OK, the photocasting was a bit of a disappointment, but hopefully my videocast will be more of a success! Take a look (and sign up to the feed) on this page:

Gordon's podcasts

There's a bonus test video on there too from Christmas...

Wonders of the internet

A quick musing on a wonderful thing about the internet:

I'm learning how to do some 3D stuff using Macromedia Director (it's multimedia programming software) at the moment, and yes it's a very esoteric subject. There's 2 books have been written about it, but they're old and don't address the issues I'm tackling. There's no school that could teach this stuff, it's too complex to get answers from a helpline, there's no training video that covers it... I can't think of any 'traditional' recourse that could help me.

So how am I getting by? I found a couple of discussion forums that are specific to 3D in this piece of software. I posted up my questions and got responses from people in Scandanavia and the other side of the US. The answers solved the problem and gave me solutions to ones I haven't even go to yet. These people are probably the most experienced and knowledgeable in this field.

When you think about it... wow.

Grinning idiot

A short note to anyone that sees me walking to work in the morning and wonders why I seem to be a giggling imbecile... You would be too if you were listening to the Ricky Gervais podcast. Recommended, if you like that sort of thing.

Half Life 2... hmm

I'm about a third or half the way through Half Life 2 and so far so good but I'm a little disappointed. When this game came out it was big big news. I think it actually came out about the same time as Halo 2 so there were a lot of fanboys arguing which was the superior game. I don't think they're really comparable, as it happens. Halo is a full-on first person shooter. Half Life isn't. Half Life is more like Metal Gear Solid where the action happens at a slower pace, with more attention to gritty, realistic environments and varied gameplay. So Half-Life 2 vs. Metal Gear Solid 3 (or 2)? Well so far the plot's been a bit thin on Half-Life 2 after an interesting start. The driving levels have been rather repetitive and dull. Although each new area is beautifully designed to feel like a real location and some effects like the water and real physics are very impressive at times, the only one that really made an impression on me was creeping along the girders under the railway bridge - otherwise it's just seems like standard game fare of old warehouses and sewers. The fun-with-physics aspect hasn't been used a great deal up to now, but I'm hoping there's more of it since it's one of the strongest points. Early in the game you had to dive underwater to break out some barrels so they would float to the surface, which you could then jump on to reach a ledge. More of that cleve stuff needed! In summary, HL2 has so far been quite fun, but just not on the same level as MGS or Halo.

Judge others by their intentions and yourself by your results.

I came across this little piece of wisdom on the excellent (mostly business oriented) blog by Guy Kawasaki:

Judge others by their intentions and yourself by your results. If you want to be at peace with the world, here's what you should do. When you judge others, look at what they intended to do. When you judge yourself, look at what you've actually accomplished. This attitude is bound to keep you humble. By contrast, if you judge others by their accomplishments (which are usually shortfalls) and yourself by your intentions (which are usually lofty), you will be an angry, despised little man.

I've noticed for a long time that people will talk themselves and their plans up as being the best thing in the world, but in reality often fail to deliver (bosses, people at kung fu, dubious friends). I hope I'll be able to follow this advice that will stop me being angry and bitter, no matter these people who talk big and do little. I'm a big fan of humility... it's just not always that easy!

New photos!

--- Update ---
I spoke too soon about the new photo feed feature, it seems like it only works Mac-to-Mac, and only if you have the newer version of Safari or iPhoto that do RSS feeds. :-(

I have an updated link to the feed, which may work for you, depending on what RSS reader you use. Hopefully they'll fix this soon... until then, try this:

http://web.mac.com/gordonbaty/iPhoto/best-of-the-last-3-months/index.rss

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OK, the first of my great new blog features - I have a Photo Feed! What is this? It's an RSS feed that will deliver my latest favourite pics to your computer!

Just click on this link:

Gordon's best pics

PS You need to be using Firefox, a Mac, or know what an RSS feed is to use.
PPS If you're using Internet Explorer, go get Firefox at Get Firefox and you won't look back

Vegas, by the way

Oh yeah, while I'm blogging about blogging, I should drop a note to say we just got back from Vegas. Diana was there for CES, which is a big consumer electronics conference that she and her colleagues were attending (it's a hard life). I came over to join Diana for the weekend. I thought it would be a short hop but it was a good 4 hours on the plane to get there. I managed to sneak into CES with Diana, which was a lot of fun - tons of new gadgets, giant TVs etc.

Neither of us are gamblers, so we focused more on the food and attractions, and there's plenty! We had a couple of disappointments with the dinner, but finished with a brunch buffet at the Bellagio and it was fantastic - including my discovery of cheese blintzes, which are sort of like cheesey crepes.

Diana predictably grabbed noodles and sushi; I had cheese & herb polenta, smoked mackerel with capers, cream of haddock, muesli with fresh berries and Diana made me eat canoli's even though I was bursting by this point. Oh the buffet came with champagne too, so we decided to have bucks fizz all the way through ('mimosa' in Americanese).

On Sunday we were killing time before our flight in the Paris hotel, when Diana noticed that the people who had just sat across from us in the bar (and quite oblivious to us) were ex-colleagues from BT! It turned out they were there for the next conference in Vegas, for online marketing...

More changes coming

I've got a copy of Apple's new iLife applications on order, so watch out for some exciting changes on my blog soon! I don't know yet if I'll use the iWeb software to create a new blog on my .Mac account or just keep going with this blog (I'm thinking the latter at the moment) but the new video blog features sound like fun!

Watch this space...

Scientists... what do they really know?!

One of my Christmas presents from Santa was Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and after speeding through it I can tell that's the first page-turner I've ever read that's all about Science. I haven't read any other Bill Bryson books (and I'm now inclined to) but in this case he's done a great job of distilling lots of scientific theory into very clear descriptions, with some of the human story (mostly quarrelling and peculiar scientists) around their discovery.

One thing that has stood out to me from reading the book is how, unlike typical scientific writing, he doesn't present every recent theory as The Answer. In fact, you come away realising how Science is only as good as the latest thinking on the available facts... and some of the facts are very limited (eg, about the nature of the universe, or atomic physics) and hence the theories are quite likely to be replaced in the future with better ones! Although you might be given to believe that Science allows us to predict the weather, when volcanoes will erupt, meteors will hit the earth, and so on, it turns out we're really not good at those things at all (well, I'm sure you knew that about weather forecasts!). It seems to me that in the future we'll be looked back upon much like we do the Victorians - that we really thought a little more of our understanding of the world than we should!