boreders

Everyone has a talent. I don’t mean a skill or a qualification, I mean an innate talent. In many instances, people use that talent to help them in their work; in others, the talents is meaningless in any useful context. I think I may fall somewhere in between with mine.

I can ‘Xerox’ something with my bare hands. If I write something in a certain way, I can almost certainly replicate it – again and again. I’m not gonna forge anything with this, because the accuracy comes close, but not that close. If I create a typeface and write something, I can repeat ad nauseum. Over time the quality of the copy might degenerate a little, especially if I don’t keep the original close at hand. Also, I happily emulate the fonts in greetings cards, often with such accuracy that people have to ask me how I did it, or whether it was there to begin with.

Yes, I have to concentrate a lot – if I don’t the copy tends to be adequate rather than good. I guess that applies to anyone. If you have a talent for painting but your heart isn’t in it, you probably won’t be creating a masterpiece.

I just sat for almost two hours creating labels for my wife’s homemade jewellery and charms. In the process, I did several fonts and logo designs – all pretty rudimentary considering the timeframes involved – and I had to repeat them three, six or a dozen times. I grumbled. If I didn’t grumble, it wouldn’t be worth the effort. However, somewhere, deep down, I enjoy the whole process ‘cause I’m quite good at it.

If anyone can suggest a career path with high salary potential to which I might apply this skill, by all means leave me a comment with the details!

In an ideal world, I think technology should be as flexible as possible, meeting myriad needs of the average user in a single compact package. For example, since I got a new computer a while back I have been searching for something that will allow me to blog without having to visit my blogs. I tried MarEdit and WordPress on the iPhone, and now I’m trying Flock, which is not only letting me post to my blogs, but keep an eye on Facebook, Twitter and the World Wide Web. I like that.

I have been plagued with a similar frustration for features around Twitter clients on the iPhone. Ultimately, if the app lets you tweet that should be enough, right? Nah. I’ve tried Twitfire, Tweetie, Echofan, NatsuLion, Tweetdeck, Twitterific, and Tweetie 2 – which is my current primary client. They all have something to offer, but Tweetie 2 has delivered landscape typing, which I’ve been hankering after for an age.

Now, it might not seem to fit into the bracket of technology, but I have been struggling to find a ‘pad’ for work. If I just wanted something with lined paper, I’d be fine, but that isn’t enough. I could pick up a pad from stationery if I wanted something so simplistic. I have seen Oxford notebooks that have hard covers, spiral binding, nooks for keeping loose papers in, and lined pages marked with points to allow you to draw vertical lines for improvised graphpaper, but… I’m at a loss to define exactly what it is that I’m after. I know I need something more, but I’m not entirely sure what that is. Perhaps, I’d like paper that was lined on the front and graphed on the back, with enough weight in the paper to mean I can use a marker on either side without suffering seepage. I undoubtedly would like tabbed page dividers to keep my notes in order, but I’d also quite like some kind of integrated indexing tab dispenser with those narrow colourful tabs that Post-It do. And maybe the card cover of the pad could double up as an impromptu wipeboard… Too far?

So, I find myself plagued by a need for features – might explain the number of hardly used apps on my iPhone. I hunger for functionality… and yet, I wonder whether having found my Holy Grail I won’t be left wanting for just a little bit more.

I seem to have spent a good part of the weekend snagged up in the seedy world of the Internet. No, I have not been knee deep in porn or wading through pixelated orcs in a raid. I have been participating in the honourable pursuit of “working out what the heck makes something tick”.

I now seem to have spent the last month trying to move my old web presence from a hosted package to a virtual server. One of the things this has involved is a learning curve rather like K2. When you have to slog so much, you appreciate a helping hand – so, I tried loading a piece of pre-installed software to run an image gallery. Alas, the accuracy of the automated install seemed to be rather poor. I ended up with something that, at best, didn’t fail completely, but that obviously wasn’t working properly either.

So, I set about working out what needed to happen to get it working. This was akin to someone giving me a paragraph of text in a foreign language and asking me to translate, accurately, merely using reference books. At first, I spent a while going through support forums and searching for likely causes of the error, then I tried resetting permissions and re-install elements of the setup. Finally, I decided to run through the whole configuration and installation procedure from scratch. Each error that arose was cross-referenced and fixed, a painful and gradual process of trial and error.

Finally, at 9.40pm yesterday evening, I completed the re-install and the gallery worked “perfectly” (within acceptable tolerances). My weekend had vanished, but the work had been done.

I ponder, was this weekend lost in translation, or did I gain something from the experience. Perhaps, my knowledge increased just a little along the way, though probably not by much.

I just saw the GoCompare.com advert with the opera signer. Apparently, the character, called Gio Compario, the creation of veteran husband-and-wife advertising team Chris Wilkins and Sian Vickers, is intended to reclaim market-share from Comparethemarket.com.

I wander whether 20 years can dull the senses enough to make someone in marketing believe they have come up with an idea? Personally, I cannot fail to make comparisons with The Laughing Man from the classic, and fabulous, ‘Absolutely‘. A stereo-typically rotund opera singer, loud and in-your-face in the most embarrassing way possible. Hmm…

I think it’s great that people don’t change. Time passes, and yet people basically do the same stuff again and again. Sometimes, perceived wisdom fails to communicate across the expanses of one generation to the next.

My youngest son just came back from a French exchange trip. He took about 75€ with him and returned with 5€. What did all that money go on? Well, 10€ vanished buying a breakfast on the way out… but, the rest of the funds seem to have vanished on the same rubbish we all seem to return with from school trips. Sweets, for a start. Oh, and a little music box that plays the theme from ‘The Pink Panther’. Inspector Clouseau was, afterall, a typical French man, right?

Money sorts of evaporates on school trips. I recall buying a German version of a boardgame on my own, an item that, at best, received only cursory glances on my return to the UK. If only boardgamegeek.com had been around 20 years ago, then I doubtlessly could have had immediate access to an English translation of the rules.

Perhaps adults – specifically parents – need to consider a little more carefully the wisdom they pass on to the next generation. I know you can’t guarantee that they’ll listen, but at least you will have made an effort!

Despite years of training and a wealth of on the job experience, there is only so much a doctor can tell you if you turn up with a sore head. The brain doesn’t feel pain – all nerve receptors and no endings, or something like that – so a sore head means something else is wrong.

I have had a headache since last Tuesday. My head contains a dull pulse of discomfort, crowning my skull like earmuffs of pain. The ache extends from temple to temple, and at irregular intervals the pain expands outwards. To make my day really interesting, my aching has a friend. There’s a disorientation, a fizziness of the thoughts and perception. On Tuesday when I felt unwell initially, that fuzziness made me delay the hour long commute home from work. Fuzzy vision and motorway driving probably don’t mix.

So, having visited the doctor today I have been reassured there is nothing seriously wrong. However, the best suggestions were non-specific muscular or stress-related problems. Take an ibruprofen and get some rest. If it doesn’t get better in a week, come back. Here’s hoping.

I have seen the advert for Elbow’s award winning album ‘Seldom Seen Boy’ a good dozen times now, and the news that they’d claimed Mercury and Brit Awards seemed promising. So, having acquired the album over the weekend, I was devastated that I hated it. Only the two ‘crowd pleaser’ tracks, featured in the advert, went anywhere close to likeable. The rest of the album I can best sum up with a single word – dirge.

I have various degrees of albums appreciation. I occasionally find a whole album that I love, while any that offer up a 70% hit rate normally sit comfortably in my ‘regular play’ section. Some I have to grow into, delivering only 40-50% hit rate on first listen, but seeping into my veins over time until I can manage without them. Elbow falls into the big disappointment category, getting a less than 40% hit rate… Heck, it got a less than 15% hit rate. I might benefit from a guided tour by one of the judges that piled awards on the album, because I may well be missing something.

In the meantime, I’m giving this album the elbow (titter)…

Oooo… Oooo… Ooooooo… Looks like the second part of the Warhammer 40K RPG trilogy is on the near horizon, in the form of the ‘Rogue Trader’ game – see here. Page is coming soon, apparently.

When the Black Library originally launched Dark Heresy, it was backed by the promise of two further games centred on Rogue Traders and the Space Marines. I’m thankful that the mission to pursue publication of these additional volumes has not been lost in the transition to Fantasy Flight Games. They’re doing a sterling job and I greatly appreciate it.

Of course, I have other problems stemming from this game. I’m actually half-considering collecting and painting up my own Warhammer 40K army… something I haven’t considered in a long while. I used to play Warhammer and 40K in my youth, but those models have been gathering dust for the better part of 20 years. Now, I find myself driven by the urge to dig out all those Marines and paint myself up a fine party of Grey Knights. My sons have Necrons and Tau, so I’m guessing I’ll need to shape and focus Grey Knights accordingly, as they’re more used to Daemons than Xenos.

What next? Any chance someone could summon up the resource to create a full length Warhammer 40K movie? I’m sure Vin Diesel would be up for it…

I read a lot of fantasy literature. Now, to me… that means I read books with swords, sorcery and Orcs. I read about empires overthrown by the power of dragons and unbridled Chaos. Elves and trolls. You know the score. Anyway. If I told someone else I read fantasy books, would they think the same thing? I don’t know.

So, if I said I had a fantasy calendar hung in my house, what would you think then? More spell-wielding wizards and frightening wraiths? Or some soft porn? Is ‘fantasy literature’ the stuff that seems to appear most regularly in WH Smiths situated in motorway service stations? The reading matter with ladies in lingerie on the front cover, or a touch of leather?

Where am I going with this – except for skirting around the whole matter of perception and the degrees of understanding hampered my personal tastes and interests? Well, my wife does a lot of good works – helps with charities stores, supports animal welfare concerns, that sort of thing. And, she offloads the things we don’t need any more through the Freecycle Network. Well, she advertised a Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell fantasy calendar on Freecycle Stockport (suitable for cutting up into prints for the connoisseur of fantasy) – and one of the over-zealous moderators banned the offer on the basis that he (or she, I’m not sure!) thought fantasy meant soft porn – of the Page 3 variety.

That’s where I was going before.

And, what I have to ask is – where does the mind of this moderator dwell that his first reaction to the words ‘fantasy calendar’ leans immediately into the realms of soft porn?

Concentration slipping. Can’t listen long. Can’t read more than a sentence. Good article. Not seen before. Intranet rots your… Um… What was I saying?