We had a power-cut last night. Pretty much the only electronic thing that worked in the flat was my iBook G3, a 2001-era 600Mhz model with a DVD-reader and no disc writing ability. After sending a few emails I closed the lid, putting it to sleep.

Ironically, this morning it was pretty much the only gadget in my flat that wasn’t working. I opened the lid and found the Spinning Beach-ball of Death. Perhaps because of its age this is not unusual. What was unusual was that after a few seconds it stopped spinning. On restarting rather than a nice, grey Apple logo I found a Finder icon and a question mark flashing on the screen. Not good.

When I thought of the word “organised” my brain leapt to the word “religion,” hence this picture of a ceremony in Vietnam. It’s a strange mix of a number of popular religions and has a few thousand followers. The theme also works in the sense that the regular columns of worshipers are also very organised.

It’s nice to see an article about Apple that’s not about the iPod! This time a reasonably sized Japanese company has switched most of it’s 2300 PCs over to Mac’s.

It’s a sensible move if you ask me! Given the ease of use, lack of virus and availability of MS Office I’ve never quite understood why Mac’s are not in wider use. I guess we need more conversions like this to reassure people that it’s not a foolish move.

In the West we take having clean, running water so much for granted that when we can’t drench our gardens in the stuff we complain like the world is about to end. And this is in the London area where most people don’t even have gardens!

Maybe it takes something like World Water Day to make us realise how lucky we are.

B introduced me to PhotoFriday. The idea is they post a theme and you reply with a photo. I have entered a couple of entries so far (in the “PhotoFriday” category of this blog). Please vote for me!

Some people seem to think that I visit new places just so that I can increment my Country Count. I guess going to three countries in one weekend a couple of years ago doesn’t do much to dispel that accusation, but it’s not true. What can I say? I like to see new places.

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Having said that, hopefully I’ll hit my thirtieth country this year!

This is a big subject and one where I’m increasingly of the opinion that we’re going too far in the wrong direction. ID Cards and imprisonment without trial are bad enough but things seem to be going even worse on the other side of the Atlantic (or the UK Government is better at hiding their nefarious plans).

Last weekend I came across an article in the Washington Post that says that the Bush administration is trying to pass a law which would restrict the rights of the press. It would, for example, make it possible to prosecute reporters who found that the President did something illegal or to publish information about a wiretap.

This has been doing the rounds, but I still think it’s amusing.

Norwegians plumb in beer-dispensing kitchen sink | The Register

Having said that, if a strange brown liquid came out of my taps I’m not sure that my first instinct would be to drink it. Mind, Norwegian beer prices — about £5 a pint last time I was there — probably skew your thinking somewhat!

red
n.

1. 1. The hue of the long-wave end of the visible spectrum, evoked in the human observer by radiant energy with wavelengths of approximately 630 to 750 nanometers; any of a group of colors that may vary in lightness and saturation and whose hue resembles that of blood; one of the additive or light primaries; one of the psychological primary hues.
   2. A pigment or dye having a red hue.
   3. Something that has a red hue.
2. 1. often Red A Communist
   2. A revolutionary activist

(From dictionary.com.)

I watch a lot of movies but I don’t usually review them. This makes “Irreversible” unusual. This word, in fact, describes much about the movie and my reaction to it.

The movie starts at the end, with a death that the blurb proudly describes as “one of the most violent murders ever portrayed on celluloid” and then works backwards detailing the motivations for it and the complex relationships between the various characters.