Mr Mosleys private life was his own. Now it isn't. I feel very sorry for him in this respect, and all power to him in his bid to make the perpetrators of the publication of this very private side of his life suffer greatly.
I like motorsport, especially F1 and BTCC. I have bias and personal preference myself regarding some of the participants, in F1 especially.
I really do not like Michael Schumacher. It's a personal thing, mostly to do with his unsporting methods. I have great respect for him as a driver and a philanthropist, none whatsoever as a sportsman. I have a very big problem with the attitude that Ferrari had during Schmachers time there of "win at any cost...no, I mean ANY cost, fuck the sport, fuck the fans, it's simple...win, it's all that matters." That, more than anything, stopped me from enjoying watching Formula 1.
I think that many of the things that the FIA under Mr Mosley has done to Formula 1 have degraded the sporting spectacle, been biased toward or against a single competitor (some things in favour of Ferrari, some things against Michael Schumacher). Even though I hate Michael Schumacher, I still didn't agree with the things that the FIA did in an attempt to counter his dominance.
Other things are just plain incomprehensible - like the strange ritual we see every week for qualification. I have tried to understand what it's all about, but I can't be bothered. It really should be simple. Put the driver in the same car they will use for the race with no fuel or tyre restrictions and let them thrash it out for fifteen to twenty minutes. There should be three rules.
1. Don't block other drivers who are on a fast run when you are not.
2. Obey flags, traffic lights and the pit lane speed limit
3. Fastest driver gets pole.
It's not rocket science.
Now we have some odd restrictions coming into play regarding things like the move toward energy recovery in an attempt to address green issues. Why restrict the amount of energy a team is allowed to recover? Surely the idea is to allow innovation and push the technologies. If a team can recover more energy, good for them.
Restrictions are just a reason for teams to spend more money trying to find the ambiguities inherent in the regulation, and therefore to find ways round them.
Anyway, back to Mr Mosley.
His private life was his own. Now it is not. How it stopped being private and became public is an issue for the courts, and I hope Mosley prevails against the NOTW.
I do think, however, that he should step aside. The FIA and motor-sport in general does not deserve to be associated with, and especially does not deserve to be represented by a person who has had this level of embarrassment in the public eye. Part of his job is to represent motor-sport, drivers and driving associations from all over the world at the highest levels of politics, business and media. This has compromised his ability to do that. Motor-sport deserves better.
20 April, 2008
27 August, 2007
Name
I love how most other consumer electronics change their names as time goes by. They add a "plus" or increment a number or add an emotive word with no technical meaning.
Since the ipod came out, there have only ever been a maximum of three models at any one time (iPod, Mini, Shuffle - with the Nano replacing the Mini). They also have a size appended e.g. 30Gb or 2Gb. But that's it. There's no "X400" model, followed by an "X410" then an "X415a", with a superior "X500" range completely out of step in its numbering conventions, currently at "X530".
SanDisk SDMX7-2048 Sansa c250 2 GB MP3 Player
SanDisk SDMX4-2048-A70 Sansa e250 2 GB MP3 Player
WTF?
The main reason for this seems to be to differentiate each model from the previous version, indicating progress and improvement on behalf of the manufacturer.
The iPod does not seem to need this. In fact, Apple does not seem to need this.
IANAM (I am not a marketer), thank god, but if I were, I'd rather be in Apples' shoes on this one.
Since the ipod came out, there have only ever been a maximum of three models at any one time (iPod, Mini, Shuffle - with the Nano replacing the Mini). They also have a size appended e.g. 30Gb or 2Gb. But that's it. There's no "X400" model, followed by an "X410" then an "X415a", with a superior "X500" range completely out of step in its numbering conventions, currently at "X530".
SanDisk SDMX7-2048 Sansa c250 2 GB MP3 Player
SanDisk SDMX4-2048-A70 Sansa e250 2 GB MP3 Player
WTF?
The main reason for this seems to be to differentiate each model from the previous version, indicating progress and improvement on behalf of the manufacturer.
The iPod does not seem to need this. In fact, Apple does not seem to need this.
IANAM (I am not a marketer), thank god, but if I were, I'd rather be in Apples' shoes on this one.
23 May, 2007
16 May, 2007
Prediction
I'm predicting that some people will be undewhelmed by the iPhone, and that it won't have every feature that everyone knows that is should have had to be successful at everything, especially something they have an interest in in it doing so perfectly that it would have changed their lives for the better.
Therefore they will regard it as not being worthwhile making. Many people will call it lame because it's only on one provider, only got 4 or 8Gb of storage, only able to do push email with yahoo, only got a software keyboard, only got a built-in battery, only able to connect to EDGE, not 3G.
If the iPhone does not meet their expectations for sales, they will claim they are right about the above, and whichever one(s) they chose will obviously be the reason for this.
If the iPhone does not meet Apples expectations for sales (I think it was 10 million of them sold in the first 12 months) then they will regard the whole thing as a massive waste of the earths time and resources. And call it lame.
My thought.
If you don't think the iPhone is right for you, you're probably not the target audience...Apple don't care about you...get over it.
As for the deficiencies - like any other product that is managed and marketed, these are the things that mean they can bring it to market at the price they do and in the timeframe they did it. The things it does do are the reason they tried to bring it to market in the first place.
I know, this is like predicting that the gobshite paul thurrot will be a fuckwitted whore again at some point in the next three months, but I like a sure-fire bet occasionally.
Therefore they will regard it as not being worthwhile making. Many people will call it lame because it's only on one provider, only got 4 or 8Gb of storage, only able to do push email with yahoo, only got a software keyboard, only got a built-in battery, only able to connect to EDGE, not 3G.
If the iPhone does not meet their expectations for sales, they will claim they are right about the above, and whichever one(s) they chose will obviously be the reason for this.
If the iPhone does not meet Apples expectations for sales (I think it was 10 million of them sold in the first 12 months) then they will regard the whole thing as a massive waste of the earths time and resources. And call it lame.
My thought.
If you don't think the iPhone is right for you, you're probably not the target audience...Apple don't care about you...get over it.
As for the deficiencies - like any other product that is managed and marketed, these are the things that mean they can bring it to market at the price they do and in the timeframe they did it. The things it does do are the reason they tried to bring it to market in the first place.
I know, this is like predicting that the gobshite paul thurrot will be a fuckwitted whore again at some point in the next three months, but I like a sure-fire bet occasionally.
31 March, 2007
Manual
I'm thinking of doing "A Week in Manual". Switching everything off on my camera and forcing myself to set every part of every shot up. It'll slow things down a lot, and I'll make a lot of mistakes, so I'll probably have to even to manual bracketing to try to learn, but I think it'll be worth it as a learning experience. This week is going to have some variety as I'll be in London for the weekend, Bournemouth on Wednesday, on a ferry Wednesday night, in St Malo Thursady morning, driving through the French country side and on to the house near Nantes, so hopefully plenty of opportunities to point, adjust, shoot, adjust again, shoot again, adjust again and finally get the shot right..!
Also, I'm really getting into my Nikkor 50mm f1.4D lens, it's a corker and I'm only just starting to understand what it's capable of. See This Flickr set for a few examples of things that can be done with it. I'm fairly happy with these shots and hope to make a lot more, even better than these.
Also, I'm really getting into my Nikkor 50mm f1.4D lens, it's a corker and I'm only just starting to understand what it's capable of. See This Flickr set for a few examples of things that can be done with it. I'm fairly happy with these shots and hope to make a lot more, even better than these.
25 January, 2007
Responsibility.
Accountability is dead, long live "getting away with it, and ignoring the consequences if you stop getting away with it". This rant was sparked by the news that Diebold made a key that lets people steal elections, took photos of the key and put it on their e-commerce site. Doh.
Yay..!
There used to be a saying that went something like "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I'm the fuckwit". This does not limit itself to the USA. How many times have companies fooled their customers, be they the members of the public or the public officers and representatives of the UK? How many times have those companies been held responsible for their actions? How many times have those officers and representatives been held accountable for their being fooled?
So when are they going to learn not to do this again? Not until someone that they care about tries to teach them that what they have done is a bad thing, and that they should have some responsibility. That applies to the companies and to the officers and representatives.
C'mon people, be angry about this. Hold someone to account. It's your job to do that, no-one elses.
Gas suppliers, electricity suppliers, phone companies, internet providers, train companies, road maintenance companies, health trusts, street cleaning companies, airlines, car manufacturers, politicians, government IT suppliers, anyone who promises something then doesn't meet their promises.
Aaaaaaaaaaaagh.
Yay..!
There used to be a saying that went something like "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I'm the fuckwit". This does not limit itself to the USA. How many times have companies fooled their customers, be they the members of the public or the public officers and representatives of the UK? How many times have those companies been held responsible for their actions? How many times have those officers and representatives been held accountable for their being fooled?
So when are they going to learn not to do this again? Not until someone that they care about tries to teach them that what they have done is a bad thing, and that they should have some responsibility. That applies to the companies and to the officers and representatives.
C'mon people, be angry about this. Hold someone to account. It's your job to do that, no-one elses.
Gas suppliers, electricity suppliers, phone companies, internet providers, train companies, road maintenance companies, health trusts, street cleaning companies, airlines, car manufacturers, politicians, government IT suppliers, anyone who promises something then doesn't meet their promises.
Aaaaaaaaaaaagh.
24 January, 2007
Eyeballs
So, a person went and read what I wrote, and actually went to the trouble of making a comment. Yay. First time ever.
^_^
^_^
23 January, 2007
Follow-up thoughts on flickr community
First of all, can I just say - holy shitting fuck, my first comment...!!!!! This wording will become ironic later in this post. Also, more on the whole "other people reading what I've written" thing some other time.
Now, back to what I was writing this post about in the first place...the flickr community, and the concept of "with privilege comes responsibility".
I'm new to all this "human interaction" malarky. That's not to say that I'm a recluse, never speak to anyone, don't have friends or am socially inept...no, what I'm talking about here is being a virgin to having a lack of knowledge of those I interact with, even to the extent that I don't know that I'm interacting with them.
You see, the only things that I've ever created that have been made available to "others" have been released in a fairly controlled way. Technical papers or documents whose audience is limited to the number of people who would actually pick it up in the first place, then by those who could get past the second paragraph without their eyes glazing over. There's no chance of these things going "outside" the people they were intended for.
This flickr thing brings a whole new set of dimensions to the table.
A quick example. I was browsing through the photos of someone I had added to my contacts, when I see a comment on one of them that I think is pretty funny, so I click on the commenters' flickr name, to have a look at their photos. Cool shots, interesting things being photographed, nice light, this is someone I think I'd like to keep track of, there's only about a hundred shots, but they seem to be putting them up more frequently, so maybe it's someone new to photography (or a least new to flickr) like me.
OK, so onto the profile page to click the "add conta...." er...what's this? "I am 12 years old, and my mum (link back to original member I whose photos I was looking at) has lent me her camera a few times."...whoa, hold on there Chris.
See, many times I've added a contact and a few minutes or hours later, a nice email arrives telling me they have reciprocated. That means there's another "contacts photos" page somewhere that gets updated with my pics every time I upload something.
What if little 12-year old reciprocates after I add her as a contact? Where does my responsibility lie? To myself, as an "artist" (yeah, right, I'm an artist...!)? To her mother, who I have a lot of respect for, and who, to the best of my knowledge, runs a very clean, very nice household with little if any room to have whatever "odd" pictures or gratuitously sweary comments (<= irony alert!!!!!) I decide to upload to flickr being brought to the immediate attention of her daughter?
I'm not talking about anything morally deviant here (whatever that means among consenting adults), but for example, I put a few pictures of a row of dead chickens and carcasses of goats hanging in a butchers shop up on flickr the other day. It was a bit morbid and unpleasant, even though I made it black and white, which sanitised it while keeping the drama...the colours were washed out by the harsh lighting anyway (oooh, get me, all photographery and technical!!!). I intend to go back sometime and take some shots of the butcher at work, and it gets kinda gruesome at times. Is a photo of a man with a big knife and blood spattered everywhere pulling the neck off a turkey with all the innards flying about the kind of thing I want to know that I am responsible for causing to pop up in little miss's in-tray? I don't know.
There's no problem putting things up on t'interweb and either knowing your audience is 100% OK with it, or with an anonymous audience. But it's different if you have a 12 year old as a contact on flickr, and you know it's a photo you wouldn't pull out at a family reunion and pass to your 12 year old niece. See, if little miss whoever-she-is ended up browsing my photos by chance, that's a different thing to me knowing that she'll see them. With the priviledge of having her as a contact would go the responsibility of having her as a contact.
Anyway, maybe her dad's a butcher, and this is how she's been brought up, so what's gruesome to me is every day life for her. Maybe she lives on a farm and pulls the heads off chickens every weekend. But maybe not.
Well, I've made my decision on this one, and I'm quite happy with it. I'm not saying I've made the right decision, because there are as many right decisions as there are opinions and points of view, and I know there's a lot of those...I just wanted to document the kind of impact that this social interweb thing can have, and the thoughts it provokes.
I guess this creation and publishing thing is another of those "not a simple as it looks" matters.
I'm learnin'.
Now, back to what I was writing this post about in the first place...the flickr community, and the concept of "with privilege comes responsibility".
I'm new to all this "human interaction" malarky. That's not to say that I'm a recluse, never speak to anyone, don't have friends or am socially inept...no, what I'm talking about here is being a virgin to having a lack of knowledge of those I interact with, even to the extent that I don't know that I'm interacting with them.
You see, the only things that I've ever created that have been made available to "others" have been released in a fairly controlled way. Technical papers or documents whose audience is limited to the number of people who would actually pick it up in the first place, then by those who could get past the second paragraph without their eyes glazing over. There's no chance of these things going "outside" the people they were intended for.
This flickr thing brings a whole new set of dimensions to the table.
A quick example. I was browsing through the photos of someone I had added to my contacts, when I see a comment on one of them that I think is pretty funny, so I click on the commenters' flickr name, to have a look at their photos. Cool shots, interesting things being photographed, nice light, this is someone I think I'd like to keep track of, there's only about a hundred shots, but they seem to be putting them up more frequently, so maybe it's someone new to photography (or a least new to flickr) like me.
OK, so onto the profile page to click the "add conta...." er...what's this? "I am 12 years old, and my mum (link back to original member I whose photos I was looking at) has lent me her camera a few times."...whoa, hold on there Chris.
See, many times I've added a contact and a few minutes or hours later, a nice email arrives telling me they have reciprocated. That means there's another "contacts photos" page somewhere that gets updated with my pics every time I upload something.
What if little 12-year old reciprocates after I add her as a contact? Where does my responsibility lie? To myself, as an "artist" (yeah, right, I'm an artist...!)? To her mother, who I have a lot of respect for, and who, to the best of my knowledge, runs a very clean, very nice household with little if any room to have whatever "odd" pictures or gratuitously sweary comments (<= irony alert!!!!!) I decide to upload to flickr being brought to the immediate attention of her daughter?
I'm not talking about anything morally deviant here (whatever that means among consenting adults), but for example, I put a few pictures of a row of dead chickens and carcasses of goats hanging in a butchers shop up on flickr the other day. It was a bit morbid and unpleasant, even though I made it black and white, which sanitised it while keeping the drama...the colours were washed out by the harsh lighting anyway (oooh, get me, all photographery and technical!!!). I intend to go back sometime and take some shots of the butcher at work, and it gets kinda gruesome at times. Is a photo of a man with a big knife and blood spattered everywhere pulling the neck off a turkey with all the innards flying about the kind of thing I want to know that I am responsible for causing to pop up in little miss's in-tray? I don't know.
There's no problem putting things up on t'interweb and either knowing your audience is 100% OK with it, or with an anonymous audience. But it's different if you have a 12 year old as a contact on flickr, and you know it's a photo you wouldn't pull out at a family reunion and pass to your 12 year old niece. See, if little miss whoever-she-is ended up browsing my photos by chance, that's a different thing to me knowing that she'll see them. With the priviledge of having her as a contact would go the responsibility of having her as a contact.
Anyway, maybe her dad's a butcher, and this is how she's been brought up, so what's gruesome to me is every day life for her. Maybe she lives on a farm and pulls the heads off chickens every weekend. But maybe not.
Well, I've made my decision on this one, and I'm quite happy with it. I'm not saying I've made the right decision, because there are as many right decisions as there are opinions and points of view, and I know there's a lot of those...I just wanted to document the kind of impact that this social interweb thing can have, and the thoughts it provokes.
I guess this creation and publishing thing is another of those "not a simple as it looks" matters.
I'm learnin'.
21 January, 2007
Flickr whore, or not?
Ok, so I uploaded a cartfull of photos to flickr. In fact the original idea was to sort of use flickr as a backup in case anything happens to my own stores of my photographs...so I'm indiscrminate and upload almost all of my photos there. It's only the stuff I *know* I'll never look at again, you know, the real crap...dull, unfocussed, half a head type shot that gets discarded or doesn't get uploaded.
Now, of course, it never stays simple, does it? Some people notice the occasional photo, and I get a "view" or two...
...that's nice, I think to myself, people are looking at my photos. Yay!
That's the free sample at the school gate.
Next thing I know, I'm pimping myself out to any John that comes along, offering myself at whatever level of degradation it takes to get my fix.
Actually, that's not true, and I've only seen one or two sad individuals like that in my time looking through flickr. But the clever people behind flickr know how to get their claws sunk deep into you and keep you dependent on the sweet juice of (take your pick from popularity; noteriety; commercial click-throughs; warm glow of compliments to bask in; contact with the rest of humanity; fame; feeling of achievement) that comes from using their products.
There's something there to keep most human beings coming back for more, no matter how little ego they convince themselves they have, or that they portray to the outside world.
And this is where it gets tough. How much self control can I exhibit, keeping what I post up to flickr true to my original idea of shooting what I want to shoot? Am I going to be looking for a particular shot based on the responses it'll get on flickr? Does flickr actualy influence me (I'm talking here about the idea of wanting to make photos that appeal, not about learning from what I see there or seeing photos I like and wanting to emulate them) when I look for a shot?
I guess the first thing I need to ask myself is "Did I actually have an initial idea?". At the moment, I think the answer is a big fat "No". I was just going to learn how to twiddle the knobs in the "right" way, then work out what it was I wanted to capture and maybe even stick in a "why" on occasion.
I wonder how many people out there on flickr truely don't give any thought about how many "explorer" shots they'll have this week, or how many 'views' or comments they get.
It's already influencing me a little in that I'm starting to question whether I should stop throwing any old junk up there and try to limit it to the photos I like. The idea would be to put less crap in the way so people can find the "better" stuff more easily. This thought came about when I learned about the contact list functionality, and how you can have the photos of those you call contacts appear on your login page. It's helped me to spot lots of really nice photos. Now I'm starting to be a contact for some others, the question is "does/should that make me more concious of what I've posted?", and therefore what will be appearing on their photo list. If I'm chucking up fifteen slightly different shots of the same thing that I took while experimenting with my camera's functionality, it could get very boring for them. Should I care?
It always starts off nice and easy, doesn't it?
Well, one thing about flickr - it's making me less shy.
But that's for another post.
Now, of course, it never stays simple, does it? Some people notice the occasional photo, and I get a "view" or two...
...that's nice, I think to myself, people are looking at my photos. Yay!
That's the free sample at the school gate.
Next thing I know, I'm pimping myself out to any John that comes along, offering myself at whatever level of degradation it takes to get my fix.
Actually, that's not true, and I've only seen one or two sad individuals like that in my time looking through flickr. But the clever people behind flickr know how to get their claws sunk deep into you and keep you dependent on the sweet juice of (take your pick from popularity; noteriety; commercial click-throughs; warm glow of compliments to bask in; contact with the rest of humanity; fame; feeling of achievement) that comes from using their products.
There's something there to keep most human beings coming back for more, no matter how little ego they convince themselves they have, or that they portray to the outside world.
And this is where it gets tough. How much self control can I exhibit, keeping what I post up to flickr true to my original idea of shooting what I want to shoot? Am I going to be looking for a particular shot based on the responses it'll get on flickr? Does flickr actualy influence me (I'm talking here about the idea of wanting to make photos that appeal, not about learning from what I see there or seeing photos I like and wanting to emulate them) when I look for a shot?
I guess the first thing I need to ask myself is "Did I actually have an initial idea?". At the moment, I think the answer is a big fat "No". I was just going to learn how to twiddle the knobs in the "right" way, then work out what it was I wanted to capture and maybe even stick in a "why" on occasion.
I wonder how many people out there on flickr truely don't give any thought about how many "explorer" shots they'll have this week, or how many 'views' or comments they get.
It's already influencing me a little in that I'm starting to question whether I should stop throwing any old junk up there and try to limit it to the photos I like. The idea would be to put less crap in the way so people can find the "better" stuff more easily. This thought came about when I learned about the contact list functionality, and how you can have the photos of those you call contacts appear on your login page. It's helped me to spot lots of really nice photos. Now I'm starting to be a contact for some others, the question is "does/should that make me more concious of what I've posted?", and therefore what will be appearing on their photo list. If I'm chucking up fifteen slightly different shots of the same thing that I took while experimenting with my camera's functionality, it could get very boring for them. Should I care?
It always starts off nice and easy, doesn't it?
Well, one thing about flickr - it's making me less shy.
But that's for another post.
17 September, 2006
Camera
A while back, I bought a digital SLR camera, and have added a few lenses and accesories as time has trickled past. I'm trying to get good at using it, without going all geek and dedicating my life to it.
I've read enough about how hard it is to make money from photography to tell me that this will not be more than a hobby unless I get very serious about it, and I seem to be congenitally incapable of getting serious about anything.
So far, very happy with the camera I have (though if I had waited three months, Nikon brought out a newer version for just a little bit more money that I would probably bought instead). It is easy enough to use that I am using it, but has enough features that I'm going to be learning for a long time.
I've read enough about how hard it is to make money from photography to tell me that this will not be more than a hobby unless I get very serious about it, and I seem to be congenitally incapable of getting serious about anything.
So far, very happy with the camera I have (though if I had waited three months, Nikon brought out a newer version for just a little bit more money that I would probably bought instead). It is easy enough to use that I am using it, but has enough features that I'm going to be learning for a long time.
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