…After Christmas and the New Year, what’s the point in the rest of winter? It’s a new year now – we should have a new season. Preferrably a warm, dry and cheap one.
Entries categorized as ‘Thought For The Day’
New Pillows
November 14, 2005 · Leave a Comment
I have bought some new pillows, and have had strange dreams-cum-nightmares. My significant other tells me this is entirely to be expected. Common knowledge. At least in her country.
All of a sudden, shopping for home furnishings has become something to dread. It’s certainly made me a little reluctant to look at getting a new sofa now….
Categories: In My Life · Thought For The Day
Computers, sex and glamour
July 5, 2005 · Leave a Comment
If you read enough (or even a little) about gadgets, technology and computers, sooner or later, you’ll find some journalists using the phrase “sex appeal” to describe a small, metal electrical gizmo. This is misguided, and lazy: firstly, if PCs genuinely did have to exude sex appeal to propagate as a species, the vast majority of them would make even the laziest Panda look like a viagra’d up lothario living life in permanent fast-forward.
Secondly, and perhaps more annoyingly for me, as an IT journalist, there’s a strange desperation to the term “sex appeal” when applied to a computer. It’s borrowing attraction from somewhere else; a latent admission that computers aren’t attractive and interesting for what they are. You could even go so far as saying describing a computer as having “sex appeal” is hand holding for a nervous audience (and writer):
DON’T WORRY LADS, LIKING COMPUTERS DOESN’T MAKE YOU AN ANTI-SOCIAL WEIRDO.
THEY ARE SEXY.
LIKE GIRLS ARE.
You see a similar tactic on the front pages of a good number of computer and technology magazines – PC Format, T3 etc. – interesting gadget, cradled in the tanned, PhotoShop-smooth arms of a model.
Red-blooded re-assurance.
You’re not a bit odd for being interested in technology.
Still, it’s perfectly understandable why it happens, and it does neatly illustrate the way in which we live through technology; not only in terms of how we function day-to-day (e.g. texting a friend to say we’re running late), but the way we often humanise technology. Give it our attributes, describe it in our terms. Calling an iPod ’sexy’ reflects the iPod’s success at becoming a part of our life – we’re telling a story about it in which the object becomes vaguely human.
Similar to how we anthropomoprhise pets, maybe.
“Good Boy.”
Categories: Tech · Thought For The Day
Tagged: sex
A New Year Message: “Contemplation, Loveful”
February 1, 2005 · Leave a Comment
A pinch and a punch for the first of the month! Same to your modem, as my bandwidth counter has now reset, and I can update properly again. Working on another new post about Japan, but in lieu of that, a photo I snapped after doing the washing when we got back home, and it’s another label from some clothes bought in Japan. This time, a pair of my fiancee’s jeans… Lovely attention to detail. Things like this make doing housework/washing clothes interesting…
Categories: Ephemera and links · Japanorama · Thought For The Day
To enjoy afterwards
January 23, 2005 · Leave a Comment
A pause in updating, for the prosaic reason that I keep using up my bandwidth quota by the middle of the month, which limits what I can do, especially regarding photos. Still, nearly the end of January, so I can chance it…
Tokyo is not the easiest place to see traditional Japan. The damage Tokyo sustained in World War II, and the staggering amount of wealth it generated in the years after mean that its temples are all skyscrapers. Kyoto has the Zen gardens and rice-paper screens: in Tokyo, it’s shopping mazes and LED screens. Peaceful contemplation has given way to the wisdom of crowds. But you can still seek out more traditional aspects of Japan in the captial – one of the last places I visited was a stroll garden: Koishikawa Korakuen.
Construction was begun in 1629, by the founder of the powerful Tokugawa family. It was completed by the Tokugawa’s second clan ruler, Mitsukuni Tokugawa.
“The name of the garden, “Korakuen”, came from a Chinese text… admired by Mitsukuni which said that there is “a need for those in power to worry about maintaining power first and then enjoy power later on.” Thus, the name Korakuen, “the garden for enjoying power later on” was chosen.” – Koishikawa Korakuen English guide.
It’s a strange and beautiful place, with a bridge whose reflection forms a full moon shape, and some fabulous Japanese maple trees. It also happens to be right next to the Tokyo Dome, one of the capital’s biggest concert venues, and an amusement park. As you walk round Korakuen, you can hear the clatter of rollercoasters and the big rich rock bands soundchecking, drifting through the leaves. There is a big contrast between how we enjoy power in the 21st century, and how people in the 17th century enjoyed it.
Categories: Japanorama · Thought For The Day
A Christmas Message
December 26, 2004 · Leave a Comment
As I’m in Japan, I was unable to catch the Queen’s speech (although maybe like most TV shows, someone will put it on BitTorrent?!?). So I have searched for an alternative Christmas message, and surprisingly, found it in the label of a jumper I bought here.
Categories: Japanorama · Thought For The Day
All years leaving
July 30, 2004 · Leave a Comment
A couple of weeks ago, I went back home to help my Mum move – away from the village near sunny Scarborough and down south. Always strange leaving a place – even though I’m all grown up so never properly lived there. Took a couple of photos, including some of the village churchyard.
Scalby churchyard.
Our old house, winter.
Categories: In My Life · Thought For The Day
Parcel Tracing
July 28, 2004 · Leave a Comment
…Is, very sadly, strangely addictive. It’s the 20-something’s equivalent of “are we there yet? are we there yet?…. are… we… there…” But I am trying to wait patiently.
Categories: Thought For The Day
