The Early Years (2002-2005)

I was an early adopter of Gmail - was one the first 1000 they invited. And now Gmail keeps increasing its storage space in the e-mail arms race, so now I’ve got 2084 megs of space. But it’s not the space that I want from Gmail. Whereas lots of programs have come under fire for not being friendly to keyboard users, Gmail is the converse: it doesn’t seem particularly mouse-friendly. Something as basic as sorting by name can’t be done, whereas Yahoo! and other providers just let you click once to sort by name. For that matter, finding an e-mail often involves typing on the keyboard, whereas sometimes it’s just so much easier to use the mouse to cycle or scroll through the various mails.

Was at the Shell station yesterday to pick up the Sunday Times and saw a new poster asking people not to do unsafe things while refuelling. Most of them were sensible, such as asking people not to refuel while on motorbikes. But one of them struck me as giving in to urban legend: asking people not to use their handphone at the station. As always, Snopes debunks the myth:

Apparently, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie is not very good, according to MJ Simpson, Douglas Adams’ biographer: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie is an abomination. Whereas the radio show, TV show, books and computer game are all recognisably variations on a theme, this is something new and almost entirely unrelated. It’s not even a good film if viewed as an original work: the characters are unsympathetic, the cast exhibit no chemistry, the direction is pedestrian, the pace plodding, the special effects overpowering (lots and lots of special effects, none of them funny mind you) and above all the script is amazingly, mindbogglingly awful. Oh, and they have taken most of the jokes out. (Link, via Slashdot)

As described in the Guardian, the Norfolk guidelines for the teaching of religious education, while well-intentioned and probably a sensible reminder of the importance of religious sensitivity, come across as oddly patronising… here’s some excerpts.

Sigh.

Apparently a giant bird decided to nest in Camilla’s hair. It’s nice to see that Laura Parker-Bowles takes after her mum in terms of their affection for ludicrous millinery. Even Rowan Atkinson - kind of a random guest - joined in the hat-related fun:

Dir. Andy Tennant Hitch is premised on an old chestnut of a romantic comedy setup: a guy with all the theories about love (Will Smith, playing the titular character) falls for a girl who makes him rethink all the theories. Smith plays Alex “Hitch” Hitchens, a man who makes a lucrative career as a ‘date doctor’, sprucing up his clients, teaching them to hide their flaws, and engineering situations that make their chosen women fall for them.

I knew some of my professors had a shitload of work to do, but I didn’t think any of them meant it literally.

Boy, talk about being punked. I’m amazed at the equanimity of his response…

After all my nice work at importing my reviews blog from Blogger into Wordpress, I find out that there’s a way to do so while preserving all the comments. Gosh darn. Here’s an illustrated tutorial.

Been a busy week for obit writers, what with the Pope, Saul Bellow, and Prince Rainier all passing away, among others (including a great comedian, Mitch Hedberg). A lot has been written about the Pope, often very eloquently, so I’ll write about Saul Bellow: I read Henderson the Rain King and The Adventures of Augie March back when I was 17, and then again when I was 21, and it still remains fun to dip into portions of Bellow. Amazing books, and really helped shape my love for American literature. So filled with life, these sprawling novels containing multitudes. Just so - just so vital.

Random words learnt: “tierce” and “cran”, both units of measure. Great Big Stuff. Bluebirds in Spring, an art film starring muffins. Funny photos: dogs deflated (via Cowboy Caleb - notice that the Dove soap bottle disappears?) and KFC mistranslated (via Jay-Walk - is that real or Photoshopped?). An MP3 player with a DJ interface.

I walked through the photo exhibition on the tsunami relief efforts by Mercy Relief (I think) next to the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station. Very sad to see the devastation. And it was also very sad to learn that people in Aceh are still not receiving the billions in tsunami aid pledged.

Sometimes I feel I need one of these. At least, I wish there were convenient booths to duck into to make/take calls in private. (From artist Nick Rodrigues.)

In reading the Economist, I amused to learn that the new slogan for the Conservative Party of the UK is “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” (as a speech from party leader Michael Howard notes).

Via No Rock & Roll Fun, the South Wales Echo makes a mountain out of a molehill with a heroic pun of a headline: Strolling Jones gathers Kate Moss. Yup, Mick Jones of the Clash went to pick Kate Moss up from the Cardiff train station.

I stumbled upon Minima Plus, a Wordpress template by Theron Parlin that was, just like the template that I use on Delta Sierra Arts, a variant of Douglas Bowman’s Minima template for Blogger. That was all the incentive I needed to try out Wordpress, since I knew I didn’t have to painstakingly recreate my CSS stylesheets.

Meanwhile, in science-related news, NASA finds water on Mars.

Here’s Wiili Chevalier, the reigning world champion in the “partial beard, freestyle” category in the World Beard and Moustache Championships. Next championship is in Berlin on 1 October 2005 if you want to compete.

Had dinner by myself at Prima Taste on Saturday (crispy chicken rice - decent but a bit soggy for my liking). I suppose there are always those who eat alone and rush off, like salarymen at the noodle house (images of Tampopo come to mind), but I find that there’s a certain pleasure to be had sitting down in a restaurant with a good book and just myself for company. I suppose it’s a thing I picked up from my travel writing days, when there was little chance I’d know anybody in the town I was in to have dinner with anyway.