• The Myth of Japan’s Failure – "Japan has succeeded in delivering an increasingly affluent lifestyle to its people despite the financial crash. In the fullness of time, it is likely that this era will be viewed as an outstanding success story."
• Man Embraces Useless Machines, and Absurdity Ensues – Technology: making life simpler.
• Merry – Sat here with my newborn son and wife, with all my family staying nearby, this post rang bells. It's sometimes important to realise what you have.

• Fifty years of LEGO – Best. Toy. Ever. And still going strong.
• Polish IT worker calculates exact speed of snail mail – Apparently snail mail is actually slower than a snail.
• For those who thought that the MacBook Air had no use… – It’s odd that Steve Jobs didn’t mention any of these uses though.

• Are You Better Off than You Were 2,000 Years Ago? – The next president of the United States of America? If only…
• Apple unveil iNvisible iBook – Even more Apple announcements this week. Kind of.
• How to Spot Arial – I never realised that Arial and Helvetica were so different!

The funny thing about Alexandria is that the all the things that it’s famous for are no longer in one piece; it’s a city famous for what it was.

First stop are some Roman ruins, a small but well preserved amphitheatre. One spooky part is a spot in the middle where your voice gets amplified, you hear back anything you say with a slight delay.

Next stop: catacombs. These were the tombs of a rich, egyptianised Roman. Most interesting was some of the art work which combined Roman and Egyptian style, sometimes with errors (deliberate or accidental?), such as only three jars next to the mummy (there are supposed to be four for the internal organs of the deceased) and the dead having head-gear normally reserved for gods.

Last stop of the city tour was the fort right on the sea front. Built by Muhammad Ali — not the boxer — to keep out the Turks (unsuccessfully) it’s mainly interesting because it was built partly out of the original Pharos lighthouse — one of the original seven wonders which fell down in the 13th century during an earth quake.

Next we head out of town toward the hotel, but by avoiding a low bridge the bus gets lost. It takes us down lots of small streets, past various small, local markets and through neighbourhoods that see few tourists. The novelty eventually wears thin as the supposed thirty minute drive ends up taking nearer ninety.

And that was my very quick tour of the city. In the morning I was heading back to Cairo.

I just read Daniel Eran Dilger’s “Winter 2007 Buyer?s Guide: Microsoft Zune 8 vs iPod Nano” but I felt that it was missing something very important for readers outside the United States.

So to fill that void here is my attempt. I have not actually used any of the new Zunes or iPods but I don’t necessarily feel that this has any material impact on the final result¹.

The iPod is a small, well made music player with many features albeit less than some of its competitors. It succeeds in doing what it does very well.

The Zune, on the other hand, is not available outside the US. A positive corollary of this is that it’s easy to carry, taking practically no space at all in bags and pockets, and it’s difficult to damage. Another plus is that the person sitting opposite you on the tube can’t use one at high volumes and annoy you with a tinny bass-line and their unashamed bad taste in music.

But, ultimately, the fact that it doesn’t exist has to count against the Zune and so my recommendation for the 2007 Christmas shopping season is Apple’s iPod.

1. Full disclosure: my review is only slightly more biased towards Apple than RoughlyDrafted. [↩]

The first day of walking was to take me from Sermano to Corte. I was driven to the start by taxi along the scary, narrow lanes that surround Corte.

It doesn’t take long before things start to go wrong. Crossing a stream I manage to put my whole foot in the water, fortunately only fleetingly and so I am not completely waterlogged.

A little while later I take what I think must be a wrong turning. By the time I get to the bottom I try to compensate for the error, but am still not able to see the “path on the left after a bridge.” On returning to the path I exited earlier I quickly cross a small bridge and there on the left is a path. I was right all along!

The karma shortly turned against me, as the path led me to a stream that I crossed and found no more path! There was supposed to be a wide, cobbled path but I never found it, instead falling back on battling my way directly up the forested hill. I have a number of scratches to prove it.

I never found out whether I took the right path at the top of the hill.

Luckily it was only the first couple of hours that I made such mistakes. The nearest I got to making a mistake again was in the afternoon when the guide suggested I walk through a hole in a fence. I found no hole and instead followed the way marked path. I think this path must have been blocked off when the guide had been written.

I stopped briefly in a couple of villages. In the one I stopped for lunch, I compared notes with a French hiker. The path she had taken from Corte was not well sign-posted. Given how easily I had gone wrong with a well waymarked path it’s just as well I took the path I did!

The afternoon was comparatively straight-forward. A lot of lose rocks (no fun to walk on) but few gradients and even they were not steep. Just my tiring feet holding me back!

Tomorrow I leave Corte and head west towards Calacuccia.

On the approach to Wembley there were a gaggle of vendors selling glowing rabbit ears and furry wands. We speculated whether this was where Gwen Stefani bought the wardrobe for her tour. They probably sell the same merchandise for most gigs here, but there are few other artists that I could imagine actually wearing such cheap and cheesy accessories.

Of course she didn’t, at least until about two thirds of the way through the set when she launched herself into the audience, alternately running around and standing in the crowd to sing a verse. At one point she borrowed some rabbit ears from a fan. Very fetching.

Okay, so I’ve now written two paragraphs about the gig and I’ve not said a word about the music. I think that’s a function of the kind of music she’s performing these days. At one end of the spectrum you have people like Madonna who do a show. This isn’t a gig in the traditional sense of the word. It’s tightly choreographed, with dancing that is tiring to watch much less perform and audience involvement limited to dancing and singing along. At the other end you have your standard four-piece bouncing around the stage; it’s all about presence, music and, maybe, a little banter. It’s a positive feedback loop.

Stefani tries to straddle the two worlds. Her dancers are energetic and well synchronised (but not quite up to the standards of Madonna’s “Confessions” tour), while she generally struts around them but not joining in. There are frequent dress changes, ranging from track suit pants to red, sparkly hot-pants. Every two or three songs she stops the music and switches into “banter mode.” We need to be louder than Paris. She’s nervous because her father-in-law is in the audience. This song was co-written by a member of Keane.

For me it didn’t quite work. The switch from the tunes to the “ad libs” felt forced, scripted in some places, random in others. You expect exhortations to sing along, but normally on the up-tempo tracks rather than ballads.

But that’s not to say that the gig as a whole failed. At the moment there are few other people making such fun, bright and energetic pop music, and even fewer with the quirky, playful nature of Stefani. “The Sweet Escape” tour reflects these qualities from beginning to end, the whole “who’s that girl” bit when the lights go down, in the choice of songs, the projected videos, the stage set and everyone performance.

In summary: well worth seeing.

This review has taken a long time coming. We saw it a couple of weeks after its initial release — so late that we had difficulty finding a cinema in London that was showing it in fact — but I’ve been sitting on my thoughts since then. Why? Well, as useful and informative as the CRAP Alert system is, not being able to compare and contrast my score to that of the CAP Alert team removed some of the fun. Nevertheless, you can’t wait forever so here is the full review.

“Shooter” starts well. As it begins, “Marky” Mark Wahlberg is a sniper in an operation that, to cut a long story short, goes wrong. The sequence ends with his team-mate dead and a helicopter exploding. Only a few minutes into the movie and it’s looking good on the CRAP scale already!

The film then relocates to US soil a few years later. Swagger (Wahlberg) is brought in to help thwart a suspected plot on the president but is actually set up. The plot, therefore, is his efforts to evade capture by the FBI and prove his innocence.

As luck would have it, not the whole US government is against Swagger. He teams up with rookie FBI agent and his spotters widow and, naturally, the good guys prevails.

Chopper: 81%. As an action film this is where Shooter excels. In one sense the movie is just a collection of action sequences strung together with some plot. There are a couple of exploding helicopters and the sequence where he escapes from a house features burning napalm and plenty of loud blasts.

Relations: 19% There are some tender moments between the spotters widow and Swagger and respect between his and the rookie FBI agent, but this was never going to be the next Titanic. There are some tight T-shirts in places but no nudity.

Amusement: 43%. As an action film, laughs are not the primary aim, nevertheless there are some good chuckle moments. One of my favourites was, “I don’t think you understand: they killed my dog.” And, “We want someone trustworthy. How about the guy with sunglasses?” “You mean Bono?” “Yeah, or how about Nelson Mandela?”

Plot: 61%. The basic plot I mentioned in the introduction. Clearly it’s not the kind of film that’s going to keep you awake at night trying to come to terms with the philosophical questions posed, but it does have some twists and turns. I’m unconvinced that the method of dealing with the “unbeatable” bad guy was the best that could have been done. I’m not even sure it was really in character. Equally, it is far better plotted than most action films.

Overall rating: 51%¹

So overall “Shooter” is an entertaining movie and, thus, does pretty well on the CRAP scale. With a complete lack of gratuitous nudity it was never going to be a top scorer but this is a very respectable outcome and if ‘action’ is your thing it does come highly recommended.

1. To the untrained eye it may seem like I have just made these numbers up. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. The calculation is very complex but I wouldn’t want to bore you with all the details. [↩]

I came across this sign while exploring China Town in San Francisco. Certainly in my dealings with CitiBank I have often thought that they were speaking a different language. This sign explains a lot.

(Yes, I know that this is the retail banking arm of Citi, but I didn’t want to spell out what I think of them on a family website.)

We went to see Pet Shop Boys play live at the Hammersmith Apollo on the 6th. It was a great gig, possibly the best of theirs that I’ve seen. This is perhaps the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen them over the years and the first time I’ve not left at least a little disappointed.

But despite the ups and downs of their live shows, they have maintained their prime position in my music collection since at least Actually came out in 1987. That makes me feel old! Of course you can’t really rationalise something that tugs at raw emotion in the way that music often can¹, but that has not stopped me trying to figure out why I keep listening to them².

The closest thing to a conclusion I’ve come to actually relates to something that Scott Adams, the guy that does Dilbert, wrote in one of his books (and blogged about but the link appears to be missing) about drawing successful cartoons. He says that a cartoon should utilise at least a few of these qualities:

• Cute
• Naughty
• Bizarre
• Clever
• Recognisable
• Cruel

I’m not sure that writing songs has exactly the same requirements, but there’s certainly an overlap. One of my favourite recent tracks is “You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk.” The first time you hear the title your reaction might be to think it’s funny. But the music and other lyrics are kind of sad and beautiful. And at the same time it’s almost universally recognisable. We may not have been there but we can imagine what it would be like. Each element might work individually but together they’re a killer combination.

But then, perhaps there is something to Adams’ original list. “I’m with stupid” is pretty cruel if you’re George Bush (funny otherwise); doing the sound-track to an early, black-and-white, silent, Russian film is quite bizarre; posing with a small dog on the sleeve of “Introspective” could be called ‘cute’; and appearing naked in front of the Queen is quite naughty. That last bit is on their album ‘Very’ and not some Jarvis Cocker-eque act of rebellion.

Anyway, back to the gig. I would never have remembered the set list unaided, but I did find a very helpful website that did the job for me. I created an iTunes iMix³ if you want to recreate the gig in your own living room:

1. Something that I’ve noticed is that pretty much all of my closest friends are passionate about music. Not necessarily the same kind of thing as me, but they’re all above your typical couple of dozen CDs. [↩]
2. Such are the perils of being INTP. [↩]
3. Unfortunately the list isn’t entirely complete. iTunes didn’t have all the tracks in the same format I have, even though I decided against including the original Bobby Orlando version of “West End Girls”! [↩]