lundi 31 mars 2003

Casualties: high profile ... and low This "morning" we had this from the 'Wall Street Journal' on Peter Arnett's controversial media activity in Iraq. Now he's been sacked. It's big news. [Later: Arnett's response.] Zimbabwe's been wiped off the media map. It shouldn't be: "As the Zanu PF government tightens its grip on power, musicians and revellers are increasingly being caught up in what has become an orgy of police and army brutality." The Zimbabwe Standard has the story (site can be slow to load). 11:38:45 PM  link   your views? [] Reconstruction? Well, that's that: back to weblogging rather than fiddling with it! Somehow, I even managed to persuade my alter ego to write an "about" page... Away from the appalling things happening in Iraq, it's been nice to see Tony Blair making up a little with Jacques Chirac again, in that weekend move which cooled off a few French pals smouldering at the charge that "all this is France's fault for that veto threat". Unsolicited missives about the "real" reasons for war (warning: goes to Flash site) still do the rounds, but to my mind Bush himself is less the villain of the piece than most of these would have it. He's never been much more than an instrument of others (rather more obviously as a Republican president than a Democratic one, according to colleague Richard who knows more about the machinery of these parties than I do). If Seymour Hersh's much talked-about article in today's 'New Yorker' about 'Strangelove' Rumsfeld is to be believed, it could be not just "what price reconstruction?" but "where next?". In 'Le Monde', cartoonist Plantu's daily comment has been getting better and better, particularly when he takes a look at the other side. Should a caption translation be necessary, it's "Happily you're there to def..." "Shut your face!" 7:04:11 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 29 mars 2003

Pre-wedding present Strange things may happen this weekend after work. Before Michelle H. abandoned us yesterday to head off to California to get married -- and in such a hurry to go that her last drink to freedom on the Desk was the quickest little party I've attended! -- she had more counsel for me about the appearance of things... (I have no advice for Michelle, that's far too risky. When a woman has an amazing wedding dress especially made by a Nipponese designer and to be featured, she says, in the "Japanese version of 'Elle' magazine", there's every chance it will appear here when she's back in May.) She recommended some "tweaks" which could send me cascading into deeper waters than I've known. We have her requests to thank already for the 'search' box. Please keep your fingers crossed. Should what I plan not work, it's the "loghome" link that gets you back here from the archived daily entries. And for French friends who occasionally find my English tricky, I'm intrigued by a nifty little something offered by one of my favourite French-speaking bloggers, the remarkable Dale in Québec and his 'Brunmarde' log. A page translator, tucked away on his fine-looking site, and in his case offered by Google. "Not accurate," he warns us. It certainly isn't, but it's better than nothing; now, the challenge will be to do this in reverse... I think I've sussed out how it's done. Bon voyage, Michelle, from all of us! Maxim's a lucky lad. 9:41:20 AM  link   your views? []

vendredi 28 mars 2003

All in a day's work One bizarre story from Africa was the sudden demise of the Saudi ambassador in Ivory Coast, found naked this morning in a pool of blood in the stairwell of his apartment block. The Saudi Arabian government has stated that it understands he died of "natural causes", but I see the BBC's version of the tale omits this detail. Could it be that they're not convinced either? The building lies in a district where many expatriates and indeed journalists live, with its fair share of odd and colourful characters. To be pursued, I'd imagine... zzz War, famine, AIDS, Ebola, corruption and dictatorship. When you're in Africa, people sometimes ask you why you don't report all the rest. The simplest answer is that many journalists do write up the good news as frequently as they can, but when the stories go out into cyberspace for client newspapers and broadcasting media, the editors on the receiving end often don't use them. We all know that's how it is. Even so, some less happy tidings receive all the publicity they can get, such as one of several thoughtful warnings issued of late about the impact of the Gulf war on aid programmes, especially now that the "coalition" is admitting it might all take a bit longer than first thought. George Monbiot, a London-based writer and academic currently in South Africa, wrote 'Left Behind to Starve' for the Guardian, but I have the allafrica.com pick-up to thank for it. zzz There's one place they are rejoicing in regime change today. The ouster of that particular madman took all of a weekend and the party won't make tomorrow's headlines. More than 100,000 noisy residents poured into the streets of Bangui this morning to applaud General François Bozizé for that coup in CAR I reported on the 16th. The man he's asked to form a government, Abel Goumba, is at 76 one of the most respected politicians left in the country, known for his honesty. I hope it works out. That's one celebration I'd like to have seen for myself. 8:21:58 PM  link   your views? [] A visa for the highlife? Good luck, Béatrice! One vivacious colleague needs it if she's finally going to get her visa for Nigeria today, to help cover next month's elections in "Africa's-most-populous-nation". These come on top of serious trouble in the oil-rich but dirt-poor Delta region, which has sufficiently slashed production now by ChevronTexaco, Shell and TotalElfFina to frighten the markets. (This unrest is deep-rooted, complex and in part the doing of the oil majors themselves, some more than others, but that's another tale...) I dare not report what Lagos bureau chief Dave threatened to write (in jest I'm sure), should his efforts to push through the visa requests for reinforcements end in failure. It would only provoke his predecessor Peter to remind us yet again of the time he had ensuring that simple things like working telephones were installed. And that was the least of it; I'm sure it will all be in his book... Ah, who'd be a bureau chief? If you're good at it, you have to be an enlightened employer, a gifted salesperson, a talented teacher, a fine diplomat and patient negotiator, and an expert in fitting 36 hours into 24 should you plan to find time for all the news as well! The last time Dave and Béatrice worked together was in Kosovo. Could that have been where Dave learned to dance? The first and only time I saw him do so was in a packed Dakar night club last March, when another of AFP's Africa editors, Michèle, shooed a bunch of us into those wonderful scrap-metal yellow taxis for a memorable Youssou N'Dour concert. It was clear from that evening that Dave and Nigeria would be made for each other: I doubt even the home of Afrobeat has ever seen the like. His eyes closed like a Geordie dervish in trance, he had even Senegal's hip leaving a respectful space around him. Go on, Béa, ask him -- and do bring back a photo. Bring back lots of photos, lass... I'd like to see one of Ade on his home ground, too. The day he turned up on the English desk in his princely regalia, I wasn't even there, but others still tell me of it in awed tones. And come the time, I've got plans for this weblog and some snapshots of Africa that a whole bunch of people might enjoy. 9:27:46 AM  link   your views? []

jeudi 27 mars 2003

'Spares' Today's good read starts out, like 'Archangel Protocol', with an ex-cop for doubtful hero. This one pushed an investigation too far and found himself looking after the 'spares': dumb clones of the wealthy and their offspring, farmed for replacement body parts. Jack Randall is also a former Bright Eyes, soldier in a war so terrifying that survival means drug addiction. And wherever he goes, violent death is close behind. Michael Marshall Smith's prose is taut and dark, liberally foul-mouthed and occasionally very funny, as he takes Randall (and the reader) ever deeper back into his past to face the many traps of his struggle for the spares. As to the "dumbness" of the clones, MMS tackles the ethics of the great clone debate head-on, but largely succeeds in preventing any morality get in the way of fist-in-the-face cyberpunk. It would be a shame to say more. "Some books stretch the imagination. This one mugs it," claims one review in the blurb and that's not far off the mark. Spielberg's DreamWorks has taken out a film option, according to Smith's website. If there's a director who can handle it... 11:04:21 AM  link   your views? []

mercredi 26 mars 2003

Watching our language Some of the hundreds of journalists who work for AFP are idiots. That's a subjective judgement of mine. Some of them may think the same of me and are welcome to do so! But none, going by measurable standards required and the qualifications needed to do the job, can be described as novices, though of course we have our share of trainees. Those who exercise responsibility have years of experience (and until I append a brief "about" page. Done, March 30). Thus, it's a very healthy thing that a week into the war -- and as the leaders of the two countries with troops pushing their way into Iraq meet at least in part to discuss what happens afterwards -- our main newsrooms still ring sometimes with debate about the words we use. The foundations for any peace cannot be built on uncertain sands of deceit and of lies. The "legality" of the campaign against Iraq is not my domain of expertise, though I am inclined to believe lawyers who say it is illegal rather than those who support it. That's a personal conviction, based on my non-expert reading of the arguments. But try "googling" -- as long as that word is allowed -- for the legal case for the war, and I wish you a better time of it than I had. I could little more than brief statements from attorneys-general. What equally worries we journalists are distortions which have already been flogged to death by bloggers but remain common currency in the media and can so easily slip through into the public consciousness. "Liberation" and "invasion" are not the same thing! "Terrorist" is a word which has been much debased since September 11, 2001. I must have subbed scores of stories about African leaders keen to win friends in Washington who use it to describe their opponents. One of the latest to do so, in recent months, is President Charles Taylor of Liberia. His opponents level the same charge at him. "Coalition" is another high-risk word. Though Washington can legitimately lay claim to less active support from other parties, since when have two main active elements formed a coalition? Some news organisations are proving better than others at how they handle stories from "embedded" journalists. We all need to remember to say that reports are subject to restrictions whether they come from Baghdad or from behind the lines of the US and British troops. Two other words sometimes get forgotten in the heat of the coverage: "suspected" and "alleged". Until such time as journalists are provided with hard evidence of what Saddam has in his arsenal -- and heaven forbid that any proof should come in the form of their use! -- the Iraqi leader possesses "alleged weapons of mass destruction". That's all we know for now. zzz I was hoping one little AFP story today would make it into the Yahoo Asia pick-up of our newswire, then I'd have no qualms about linking to it in full. But since it was reported by a good friend currently in Qatar and subbed by an old hand in the region, nobody will kill me for giving the gist of Brigadier General Vincent Brooks's exasperation at the US forward command centre. Brooks spoke out against Iraqi soldiers' "disregard for laws of armed conflict" and said that in donning US uniforms, their behaviour was "akin ... to the behaviour of global terrorists". His words, including that one, again. Yes. It's not fair play. But as a colleague remarked, such tactics helped the Americans win a war of independence. I have no problem whatever with regarding Saddam as a "murderous dictator". It just stuns me to hear people say they really expected all this to be over inside a week. There's a long way to go before reconstruction is more than an important item on the agenda. 9:46:42 PM  link   your views? [] TechSurvivors (2) - maintenance Home late from work and with a pile of papers to sort out, it was time to let the computer run a weekly check for updates to Mac and third-party software and then to deal with the major, monthly maintenance routines. The latter I completed this morning while catching up on the radio news as I shaved, bathed and all that. The old pleasure in watching complicated tools do their job has long since palled... With four partitions on my Mac, the monthly programme takes about three hours to do properly, but it's vital. In past months, I've been out on call four times to help people who ran into big problems because of trouble which could have been prevented. It's just that nobody told them how, least of all Apple. For the software updates, I'm paid up into the Pro system of Version Tracker (which also works for Windows), since this offers a desktop tool which checks what's on your machine and then compares your applications with what they have on their servers. With time, you learn that you don't always need the latest version. Read the fine print...! :) It costs, it's imperfect because it sometimes tells you, for technical reasons, that you don't have the latest version when you do - this particularly seems to apply to items you may have added to your "preference panes" in OS X. But it's a useful time-saver. At that Mac help site of ours in my links, TechSurvivors, the regulars consider prevention every bit as important as cure. Everybody has their own daily, weekly, monthly and six-monthly maintenance routines, often discussed and compared. Over the years, I've learned the hard way what can go wrong if you don't bother with them. Several friends have turned to Macs in the past couple of years. I can scarcely recommend strongly enough that they visit TS and one or two other sites to check out how to keep their machines running like a Rolls. Since much of this was thrashed out a while back, a search in the archives is likely to turn up what you need, if there's nothing in the current forum. Apple's own Disk Utility is a far from adequate tool. Use the TS search function, punch in words like, well, "maintenance", "routines" and even ... "chores". "Disk utilities" is another good bet. If you can't find what you want, don't hesitate to register and pop the question. The community ranges from newbies to people who can help you out with the arcane language of the "terminal" and the Unix underpinnings of OS X. A friendly and quick response is guaranteed. And a TS maxim is that "no question is a stupid one". Similar fora, which have in recent years also emerged here in France, exist in the Windows world. While I contribute to TS far less than I have done in the past, I owe much of what I now know about Macs to the people there. I found the discussion board medium a little scary at first, which is why I know that many hesitate to take the plunge. But when you do, you won't regret it. The time you can save is considerable, rather than ploughing through the manuals, though a passing acquaintance with even those is no bad thing. zzz For other issues, there are any number of useful portals to hundreds of sites. Ultimate Mac hasn't been updated for three years, but remains high in my bookmarks. French friends who've told me they'd like to see something similar simply needed introducing to the one-man show produced by Yves Cornil. When it comes to OS X, Richard Wourms gets less online credit than he deserves for 'OS X facile'. In English, there's a cornucopia offered by Savage Transcendental. 11:25:58 AM  link   your views? []

mardi 25 mars 2003

Hot java plug-in That's USB coffee. I thought the whole point of making the stuff was to get you away from the computer. Silly gadget of the month? Well, if it works, it might save a socket converter in foreign hotel rooms. (Thanks to Guardian Online who found this on Brian's [Windows] Buzz.) 11:03:17 AM  link   your views? []

lundi 24 mars 2003

Different drums Most of what Michael Moore had to say at the Oscars was almost drowned in the soundbite I heard this morning by the boos and the cheers. As it has done for months, 'Bowling for Columbine' still tops a 'Hit Parade' of French film critics published weekly by Pariscope ('The Hours' is in 17th place, 'Chicago' at 19 and 'The Pianist' at 11). This rating is based on the number of stars 11 critics gave each film when it came out here. The Magdalene Sisters is currently in 2nd place, while in 3rd is Etre et Avoir, a slice-of-life school year in a small class in Auvergne farming country. This last won three Césars at Cannes. Marianne and I acknowledged that it's fine documentary film-making, but were reproached for suggesting that the two classroom tortoises that appeared as the first characters set the pace for the rest of it. 1:12:26 PM  link   your views? [] Beyond saturation The mass coverage given the Oscars, even when you don't have a TV, is one reason I've almost nothing to say about them. I imagine visitors here know what they think of the ceremony and have no need of my two cents' worth. The same largely goes for the conduct of the war. Before it began, I had plenty to say, starting with a comment on Turkey, whose role in the region remains a cause of much speculation, concern and analysis. The media and the Net have left no excuse for ignorance, unless one insists on being spoon-fed by TV. Friends have helped point me to scores of reports, weblogs and pertinent sites, including articles about matters allegedly ducked by chunks of the press. Many bloggers have cited briefing papers and items produced by the Project for the New American Century to underscore for or against views. This right-wing think-tank describes itself as: "a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle; and that too few political leaders today are making the case for global leadership." Others turn to the Centre for Research on Globalization: "an independent research and media group of progressive writers, scholars and activists committed to curbing the tide of 'globalisation' and 'disarming' the New World Order." I'm simply adding both today to my links. Unless anything further occurs to have me vent my spleen or I come across something singularly offbeat, I'd rather henceforth not waste people's time by piling it on about current events, but try to focus on what might happen after the immediate conflict. It's evident that if Bush's "coalition" doesn't plan to dispense with the UN altogether, hammering out a Security Council resolution for the future governance and rebuilding of Iraq, after one tackling the humanitarian issues, could prove as tough as the tussle over the resolution that never happened. 1:08:45 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 23 mars 2003

Cinderella syrup Today, it was Marianne's turn to choose movie. The Jennifer Lopez vehicle Maid in Manhattan is no more direly predictable than other chick-flick comedies we've seen ... but left the nagging feeling it has serious pretensions. A worlds-apart plot pitting Ralph Fiennes as green-minded playboy-cum-Senate candidate against Lopez as single mum with a message was not a memorable combination. (Bob Hoskins as avuncular butler pleasantly surprised me, since I've not seen him since Roger Rabbit and the unforgettable Pennies from Heaven, a mere quarter of a century ago.) Still, 4/10. It's relaxing to leave your brain at the door. 8:44:24 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 22 mars 2003

Perles de jeunesse When I was a lad, I never had to carry at least four kilos of books on my back every day, plus the extra (mainly digital) paraphernalia now considered essential, which doubles the weight. Nor did I get many hours of detention, because a beating was the way they settled matters then. However, I recall the petty pleasures of insolence and the occasional annoyance at being singled out in class because of your differences - such as having an English father. It would seem that a teacher ventured to ask, "Well then, Miss Vocabulary, and what do you think happened here?" "C'est clair," Marianne replied. "Anna's discovered that she is pregnant and Brian has just discovered that he's the father." Hmm ... 9/10. If some things never change, the way today's budding teenagers record them does. For the delectation (or otherwise) of French-speaking readers, Marianne's friend Séverine is taking good note on the Net of the precious gems dropped by teachers and her classmates. Several such pages persos have a feature in common: making up the quotes is not allowed. A quick look further shows a popular website devoted not only to such perles, but also ready-made excuses, good and decidedly dangerous, and a methods of cheating, rated from the "easy" to the "suicidal". zzz Oh, and on that other subject, the youngsters draw my attention to the humble bretzel. Some languages are "under construction" and the English is not all it might be, but it's none the worse for that... 6:39:23 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 21 mars 2003

A question of respect "Some people have cellars and spend the night there." (Subhy Haddad, Baghdad resident & BBC World Service reporter). (Photo uncredited: BBC) Though widely reported, the Natalie Maines (Dixie Chicks) grovel remains far from enough for some. Just whose rights did she violate? (Photo: AP) 11:28:21 PM  link   your views? [] Staying on top Nice to hear neighbours enjoying a party last night, though it was loud. Brent Simmons of ranchero.com announced a war-free weblog, drawing a horrible new word from a reader: "I'm morally opposed to injectionating politics where it doesn't belong." Like many before me, I'm finding that blogging is radically changing my browsing habits, particularly using a newsreader. Whether this is for better or worse, I've yet to decide. I've been less moved by trying out the new approach to desktops Brent is packaging with NetNewsWire until Monday. Spring (Mac OS X) is undoubtedly "innovative" and original, but it didn't blow my mind. The bundle offer, nevertheless, is worth pointing out to people who think visually more than I do. OSNews has run a survey on the "definitive desktop". On the war, I'm not going as far as Brent. After all, hundreds of thousands of people have been busy, particularly in the United States, seeking out information of every kind across the Web. A California-based "Internet Performance Authority" monitors how the Net is taking the strain: Keynote. Scarcely the sort of thing to interest the birthday crowd in the building across the garden out back in the small hours! Windows wide open, spring round the corner, but grey skies are back to mark the equinox itself. Friends using Windows ask now about newsreaders for their machines. Without trying it, I'm told that a good one, if you're prepared to fork out $29 dollars, is Newsgator, which runs in Outlook Express. However, one of those to recommend it, Martin Sutherland, has also opted to drop it! All things in moderation ... and he wants to stay in control. This coming weekend, I doubt I'll be blogging much. I haven't seen my daughter for very nearly a month. She and her mum had excellent reason to go to Lille instead, the last time it was "my turn" to spend a weekend with her. That's cool, but when Miss is around, she's number one! And I suspect that when this computer wakes up, it will mainly be for The Sims, the processor of even a powerful machine groaning under the strain. I think the Vacation extension pack is about the last I can allow. If she wants the "kitties and canines" too, she'll have to negotiate that with her mother and her PC. The phenomenal success of The Sims is scarcely surprising. It's most therapeutic, when you feel powerless in the face of the world out there, to play God in one of your own. And if a Sim behaves badly, you don't have to bomb him. You simply suggest he goes for a swim and then yank the steps out of the pool. 11:14:09 AM  link   your views? []

jeudi 20 mars 2003

Toying with food A Paris letterbox can fill up with junk mail as fast as people are expected to recycle the stuff: four or five a day on glossy paper, and with rare luck an unsealed envelope or two of a size unusual enough to keep and use. ISPs still send unwanted CDs. But this one was new to me. Junk office computer games sealed to oven-ready food on the supermarket shelves, for a fun time "during the break!" I can think of better ways myself... 10:48:32 AM  link   your views? [] Where's my cryptonomicon? Now it's begun, so have the more absurd reports already. If journalists with no inside information laid out plans for special shifts during the night, it's ridiculous for the British defence secretary to go on air to "deny that the prime minister didn't know" until after the attacks began. True, I think many of us were expecting the big one from the outset, rather than the "decapitation" bid that will now reassume its place in the lexicon of military-speak to be deciphered daily. Got a nice note from Chris Allbritton this morning (Back to Iraq 2.0 in the links): he was quick. My thoughts are with the Iraqi people, as well as friends and colleagues out there and all around. And the "boys" this side, for now, of what I suppose we'll have to call the "allied lines", average age reportedly 21. Such are modern newsrooms that in 1991 the blitz from CNN on the wall-sets was almost permanent, mercifully kept low most of the time. And there are the Beeb and Sky too. The rumour-mill trying to avoid feeding itself. The US military are presently said to have no plans for a press conference - now there's a surprise! The real job of decoding and sifting will be no easier than it was then. The contrast is inevitably stark with that successful exercise in regime change I wrote about on Sunday. The known death toll last night from that one was 13, other casualties uncertain and damage, mainly from looting, considerable. During the first few hours of that business, nobody even pretended to know what was going down. 10:43:55 AM  link   your views? []

mercredi 19 mars 2003

Uncommon calibre Despite the risk of temporarily producing a 'monoblog', I can't pass over the impression that the quality of debate in Westminster has never been higher. Tony Blair obviously has an eye to history as well as the present, spurred on by resignations from his cabinet, except one from the woman I mentioned when first she broke ranks, before she knocked her conscience on the head. For BBC commentators, "Parliament regained its position as the cockpit of the nation." Arguments expressed by fine orators in both House of Commons camps yesterday and broadcast again this morning ranged across a spectrum of to be found far beyond the shores of one island. The 30-minute summary is still on the Web, but not for very much longer. Apparently not yet exhausted by democracy, Blair will be back for more this afternoon. I doubt he's on the amphetamines they feed military pilots. Until torpor resumes, which is highly unlikely in the near future, I may surprise myself by showing a little more regard for politicians as a species. 10:54:10 AM  link   your views? []

mardi 18 mars 2003

Street snaps In my building there are still toilets on each landing, though all of us have inside loos, apart from the concierge, who simply doesn't seem to want one. Nowadays, she prefers to be called a gardienne, but her dog does most of that. Many buildings put up at the turn of the 19th century in Parisian arrondissements outside the inmost four on the snail pattern still have the lavatories on the stairway, to answer a question from Jill in London, who had special reason for checking. They've been replaced by lifts less often than you might imagine: it's expensive, especially for landlords who are often absentees. My own is rare, living nearby and with a good fruit and veg business downstairs. Before Jill comes over to complete her architectural study, she can find "ordinary pictures" of Paris buildings simply by looking in a phone book. Somebody went round one afternoon taking pictures of the lot. No mean feat. There are more than two million such pictures from eight cities here. So it says, I've not counted. zzz American visitors are in town in as large numbers as they were this time last year, going by the many I overhear in the Métro, while some of the routine travel announcements are being made in English again, which means the authorities think winter's over. I've been sent more anti-French jokes and quotes, but not many. The latest (thanks, Catherine) were of the kind: - How many Frenchmen does it take to change a light bulb? One. He holds the bulb and all of Europe revolves around him. - "The last time the French asked for 'more proof' it came marching into Paris under a German flag." -- David Letterman. Who's he? I didn't know either, till tonight (attention: pop-ups. I even got a nasty little weather watcher which downloaded itself and launched Virex but didn't make it sneeze). Have I been missing another indispensable element of US TV culture for all these years? - "I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me." -- General George S. Patton. Nothing, sadly, new! American acquaintances may be keeping the best to themselves. zzz A recent change both on and under the city streets is a noticeable increase in smiles. People look less burdened than they did last week. In an over-analytical way, I suggested this might be because now we all know pretty much when something horrible is going to take place, it's slightly less ghastly than being sure it will happen but having to wait while the politicians go through the motions. As if once the inevitable has arrived, it becomes acceptable. A Scots colleague dismissed this as nonsense, saying that probably many people don't give a damn and Iraq remains a long way away for most. The touch of bonheur is more to do with "imminent spring and the hormones, my lad," he countered. Maybe. In one sense, a propaganda war has already been won by Washington. You meet fewer people now who will admit they ever thought disarming Saddam was the issue. 'Regime change' was what it was always about, right from the start, they remember. And when you ask them when "the start" was, the date goes further back every time. 9:19:58 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 17 mars 2003

Day of reckoning So House of Commons leader Robin Cook has resigned, Bush is giving his ultimatum to Saddam, this kind of cartoon is still filling hundreds of in-boxes (thanks, Sylvain, Larry and the unidentified artist), the pullout of personnel has begun, four months suddenly seem very short, except on the propaganda front ... and the African Union has cracked down on that noisy but largely unnoticed weekend coup in the CAR by very sternly condemning it. TechSurvivors had a facelift while I wasn't looking! With all eyes elsewhere, I've been quietly doing unfinished business, including my annual tithe to be rendered along with others at our favourite rite of the year. I vaguely wonder whether unions have "chapels" and "fathers" and "mothers" on account of this High Mass. The good news at work has been all the "youngsters" quite indifferent to such arcane terminology coming to meetings; we're well out of the post-Thatcherite doldrums, though nobody this side of the Channel hand-bagged organised labour so hard. The bad side of this rising level of attendance is that people feel they need the unions again: short-term contracts, slipping pay rates, precarious freelance work, the inexorable concentration of control in the traditional media and even, heavens, mounting concern about ethical and editorial matters and pressures. In this calm before the storm, I'm taking a look at the state of the alternative media, including more of the myriad blogs around, so that Navigation column is likely to grow. Unlike the geraniums. This has been a day of reckoning for them too. Either what I've done will work or I will have to bid them farewell. I shall go and sing to them shortly. As for the new look here: thanks to Bryan Bell for the theme I've begun fiddling with (and for some guidance in CSS; I didn't know what a cascading style sheet was last week). And the blog books arrived! I'll start reading the best bits soon, but it's amazing what helpful people have simply put on the Net. 9:52:59 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 16 mars 2003

Screen show Occasionally, I'll chip in to one of those 'what does your desktop look like?' forums. Like many do, I began getting pix from places like MacDesktops, but quickly went further afield. I like things sparse, not too hi-tech and rarely a riot like this: One that I've found relaxing of late comes from OmniTek Designs. I'll happily spend an hour finding such work by browsing from one gallery to another, checking out 'user' pages at sites like Digital Blasphemy. One thing leads to another, as well as seeing what tools people enjoy using. What Martin Brunker does with Terragen has taken me back for more, though I've never started playing with it myself. When it comes to preparing pictures to show here, a neat (Mac OS X) screenshot freebie is Snatcher, with its choice of formats for saving the files, while Resize does what it says admirably. Developer Cedric dJ also offers a Windows version. 5:14:31 PM  link   your views? [] Hot night in Bangui Did the woman who e-mailed the Beeb today suggesting that Robin Cook be allowed the airwaves to announce a coup against the "great dictator", Blair, while he was out of the country know what happened in central Africa yesterday? You won't find much about Bangui on the Net, not in English anyway. Once a French colonial jewel of a town, the capital of the Central African Republic is now just another of those places where people scrape a living and public sector salaries routinely go unpaid for months, if not years. When gunfire broke out in the late afternoon in the north of Bangui, of course nobody knew what was going on. The first word from witnesses fleeing to the south and west spoke of "rebels" roaring in aboard 4x4s and taking up positions near the hospital and, apparently, the presidential palace. Which "rebels", though? There's a choice. People in safer districts wisely preferred to stay home. Later, it emerged that a plane bringing President Ange-Félix Patassé, who has every reason to be paranoid but is potty as well, back from a summit in Niger got shot at as it was coming in to land. He hot-tailed it out to Cameroon. Lucy Jones sent this 'e-mail' to the Guardian less than a month before the last time it all happened. The guys who appear this morning to be "in charge" in Bangui back General François Bozizé, a former armed forces chief sacked by the gaga greybeard in October 2001, after helping to put down previous trouble. He resisted arrest the following month and tried to topple Patassé a year later, but that bid was crushed with help from Libyan troops and rebels from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The latter never went home and made themselves unpopular by looting Bangui and far worse as soon as they had "liberated" the city. This was why, yesterday, it seemed at first possible that the shooting began when a band of these hired thugs decided to spend a Saturday night on the town. The BBC reports today that Patassé has survived "at least seven coup attempts" since being elected in 1993, but it's never as simple as that. Some of these were mutinies. Tribal considerations abound. And though France has largely renounced the role it played in the CAR back in the days of the "Emperor Bokassa" and the diamonds scandal with President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Paris was none too pleased to see Patassé win that election. Changes in French policy regarding its "back yard" were what opened the way for Libya's Colonel Moamer Kadhafi to muscle in. His troops were supposed to go home, making way for a regional peacekeeping force led by Gabon, but it would seem that such parts of the Gabonese-led contingent as the French have flown in never deployed much further than the airport. In the next few days, we'll be hearing more about Chad as well. Bozizé went to neighbouring Chad after resisting arrest in November 2001. Only last week was the regime of Chad's President Idriss Deby declaring its friendship and regard for "brother Ange-Félix", amid off-the-record reports that Bozizé had slipped back into the region from France. This tale wouldn't be complete if oil didn't come into it somewhere. So it does. Chad lies to the north of the CAR and there's oil in border territory. In Bangui, people know what's happening in Baghdad more quickly than they have the remotest idea what's going on up north in their own country. News from there can take a week to arrive. None of this is likely to make front pages. Most of it is unlikely to be picked up at all, not because it goes untold. I'd hate things for people in Bangui to get even worse than they are. Today, it's reportedly their turn to do some free shopping and there are accounts of "singing and dancing". You can always rely on Africa to take your mind off Iraq. 1:16:08 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 15 mars 2003

Listing of parts The previous entry should have been titled 'Martian drift'. Forgive the lapsus, with the flow of the news... I intended to avoid yet another 'war post', but I'll be at work when this afternoon's demo starts in Paris and may again not get there until it's nearly over. A further note makes me feel better, if not anybody else. From all over the world, AFP's major news 'hubs' have unleashed on the clients a barrage of stories and fact-sheets as a "just in case". All part of the service, though linking here to those scores of articles certainly isn't. Some clients will doubtless put a few on the Net: that's their choice and job. I read enough of them almost to wish I hadn't. As ever, some of the most chilling were brief clinical descriptions of the firepower ranged around Iraq. One of the "toys for the boys" is the BLU-118/B - Thermobaric Warhead. This costly little jewel was tested in Afghanistan. "The United States didn't need to use the thermobaric bomb," Robert Hewson of 'Jane's Air Launched Weapons' has argued, according to an article in the 'Weekly Standard'. "The overriding reason for using it was to see how it worked." AFP's package included a spectrum of articles about the possible impact of a war. Some are grim reading too. For its part, the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq has made available what it described as a "strictly confidential" UN document (from December) on "Likely Humanitarian Scenarios". The Global Policy Forum amasses and links to documentation enough still to be reading, saving a radical shift in the seemingly inexorable course of events, long after the strikes begin. Today's the time to link to Christopher Allbritton, former AP and New York Daily News reporter, and his plan: Back to Iraq 2.0. 9:29:15 AM  link   your views? []

vendredi 14 mars 2003

Martial drift A tech newsfeed caught a roving eye last night: "New images and analysis suggest the slopes around the Red Planet's largest extinct volcano, Olympus Mons, contain dark stains caused by brine flowing down hill. "The discovery indicates that the substantial underground ice deposits on Mars can sometimes melt and flow across the surface. "It is bound to increase speculation that life may exist near to the surface of the planet." University of Oregon researcher Tahirih Motazedian spoke of the find to the Beeb, who may have been following up a NASA press release about 'Melting Snow as [possible] Cause of Gullies'. An earlier report, then billed a "landmark discovery"; dates back to June 2000. If "life near the surface" speculation is indeed renewed, I'd doubt anyone's hoping to find more than minute and extremely simple organisms which can survive in almost unimaginable cold. Water plays a vital role in Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy about the exploration, terraforming and difficult settlement of the planet: 'Red Mars,' 'Green Mars' and 'Blue Mars'. What I enjoyed about these books, apart from the hard science dosed into a narrative that swept me readily on from one to the next, was the political, social and economic breadth of Robinson's near-future history. Increasingly closely, he interweaves the Martian settler society's setbacks and successes with a highly plausible scenario for developments much closer to home. A commendable site about 'Mars in the Mind of Earth' credits Robinson with "perhaps the most realistic look at the colonization of Mars in literature". To date, I've found no reason for that 'perhaps'. I've been waiting for Robinson's 'The Years of Rice and Salt' to appear in paperback. Now it has. Plenty on that at the SF site in my link-list and elsewhere. Quite why this latest is classified as SF I don't know. Robinson's one of my favourites because he writes novels which often happen to include a lot of science. 11:13:12 AM  link   your views? [] Humbug, fudge and blue cheese To say, like a French weasel politician whose name I failed to catch from the bathroom said this morning, that Chirac didn't say 'No!" to a resolution opening the way to war is nonsense. The argument was that Chirac said "no" on Monday, but might change his mind since the "no" was in Monday's context and even French people had failed to grasp the "ifs", "buts" and devil in the detail. Crap. The man said "No". It was perfectly clear. In 'Le Monde', I've now read cogent French people who disagree with him. Good. I was beginning to worry. Let nobody pretend that he didn't lay it on the line. French people, apart from his "friends" like that member of parliament, got the message. Last month, Brendan O'Neill listed 10 wrong reasons to oppose the war. I didn't buy two of them, but the man's integrity made me a regular reader. 10:53:47 AM  link   your views? []

jeudi 13 mars 2003

Seti scientists narrow the scope Catching up: "'We're not jumping up and down saying we've got to get to the telescope immediately, we've just found E.T.,' said Dan Werthimer, SETI@Home's chief scientist. 'These are the best signals that 4 million volunteers have found over the last four years, and we're going to check up on them.'" The pick of the pops begins on Tuesday, reports Wired. I'm not holding my breath, but would some good news from out there change things down here? 11:35:09 PM  link   your views? [] Meanwhile, in Ghana Where, of course, Kofi Annan comes from. "Let’s remember that the crisis in Iraq does not exist in a vacuum. What happens there will have a profound impact on other issues of great importance. "The broader our consensus on how to deal with Iraq, the better the chance that we can come together again and deal effectively with other burning conflicts in the world, starting with the one between Israelis and Palestinians. "We all know that only a just resolution of that conflict can bring any real hope of lasting stability in the region. Beyond the Middle East, the success or failure of the international community in dealing with Iraq will crucially affect its ability to deal with the no less worrying developments on the Korean peninsula. And it will affect our work to resolve the conflicts that are causing so much suffering in Africa, setting back the prospects for stability and development that the continent so badly needs." An 'insight' column in the Accra Daily Mail is as good a summary of a widespread African position as any I've seen lately. Not surprising, since Annan wrote it! 10:58:03 AM  link   your views? [] Note de service (deadlines) What a wonderful morning! The forecasters say we could have a sunny spell like this until well into next week - will it run as far as the official first day of spring? Let me not dampen spirits with a couple of reminders: we've got room 613 for the English service meeting this afternoon (1300 GMT) for 90 minutes. The agenda drawn up by David is as long as the issues raised. So even if we can't get through it all, let's please try to stay focussed on the most important points. No "rambling". :) To clear up those doubts, an SNJ meeting tomorrow afternoon is open to all comers, not just a committee affair. Yes, Friday's a bad day for it - but when else? This time there will be no leather chairs, it's in the first floor meeting room (same hour) opposite the Comité d'entreprise offices. I'm still taking questions and contributions from people in bureaux around the world, as are Dmitri and the others you know. Reports back will come via the usual channels. 10:43:31 AM  link   your views? []

mercredi 12 mars 2003

In short order The crew cut is in. Whether or not they've got upcoming 'assignments', more and more people show up to work with heads shorn for action if not the indecisive weather. Yet this has been happening all winter. The girls haven't gone quite as far, but there's a definite style even on the Desk afrique which looks great at the risk of chilled craniums. Patxi, back in their hotseat today after a spell in Pakistan too short for his liking, tried to wave me back across the gap known as "the Channel", contending it was no time to be chatting to a compatriot of the beleaguered Blair. For good measure, he chucked in the old one about how we burned Jeanne d'Arc. This is untrue. As I have reminded countless French people down the years, the English merely handed the hapless maid - who sported a very close crop if that fine film The Messenger is to be believed - over to be roasted by her own. The message we woke up to this morning was clear enough. You've heard it, but I kept it for posterity. We'll see what the Beeb broadcasts on Sunday as the "Donald Rumsfeld soundbite of the week", but this is mine: Gone the age of reason. It's tough to avoid concluding that the truth out there may be horribly banal: the man is quite simply bonkers, off his rocker, stark but not raving mad. Donald 'Strangelove' Rumsfeld has done damage limitation on this statement, of course. Just how much harm can you do before ordering a shot? And how do you retract insanity? Karin wondered where I found Churchill, Twain and others on war. They were quotes of a better calibre than anything I can fire off tonight. (But I have LMG, in my linklist, to thank for taking me there.) Bets are on for what it might be "code-named" when it starts. So far, the best I've heard is 'Operation One Finger'. Comments have begun to arrive here since last night. They do show up, but the server has a rhythm of its own and a page reload might be needed. I appreciate them and so will Monsieur Baudier. Feel free to pitch in! 10:40:38 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 11 mars 2003

Deliberately diverse "I've been trying to work out what your weblog is about," somebody remarked today. This was a 'good thing'. I stumbled on one by a New Yorker who blogged crisply about war, his midlife crisis, war, sexism, war, war, Ebola in Congo, war, pollution in Mexico, harassment at his job, war, war, war, reality shows, Palestine and war. That was the first page. Since the latest Ebola outbreak was drawn to his attention by its effect on central Africa's gorillas (and incidentally Congolese villagers, of whom now more than 100 have died), perhaps I should e-mail him about Portugal's rabbits. I was paying little attention when that story went out to the world today, but can only assume lthat the dam in question must be the Alqueva one. Apparently, rabbits are fleeing to shrinking little islands by the thousands as the waters steadily rise. Their plight is such that even the hunters feel sorry for the poor little buggers. Not to speak of the lynxes. zzz If David Pogue didn't write well about computers, I wouldn't have cited the feller in an earlier entry. But when it comes to the Mac and Steve Jobs, Pogue can get up my nose, which is why I'd rather buy other people's books. I don't deny that those 'Missing Manuals' do what Apple used to do more often itself. But occasionally I'd like to see Pogue bite the hand that feeds him rather hard, instead of behaving like John the Baptist announcing the good news from heaven. In one NYT column last July, he refutes being a Mac bigot, "but the company itself has a history of brattiness." More, David, more! There's been a most readable discussion going on Techsurvivors sparked by 'ejc', who explained "Why I see no need to adopt OS X". One of many, sure, but it stayed clear of a dogfight, as virtually every chat does in that remarkably self-regulating community. I like OS X, but I like OS 9 too, now relegated to 'Classic' status and henceforth sold as a bootable operating system on machines almost nobody I know can afford. I did not appreciate the high costs entailed in the upgrade, a still risky "like it or leave it" marketing strategy from Cupertino, all the hype and the often lamentable quality of Apple's so-called support service for the individual user. And Pogue can tend to be too much of a hyper-guru for my taste. Rory, who is Irish, tells me that the band the Pogues were initially banned on the BBC. They started out with the name Póg Mo Thóin (pronounced, roughly, Pogue Mahone). This does not mean, as at least one cheeky website will tell you, "Have a nice day." It means "Kiss My Ass". David, evangelism's fine, but the odd tongue-lashing for the patron Saint Steve would not be the original sin. zzz Somebody else who generally knows what to do when a Mac runs into trouble is Randy S. Singer. Randy, like my Dad, is proof that not all lawyers can be bad or that lawyers cannot be all bad. Both freely contributed valuable counsel - with all due disclaimers attached - when we set up Techsurvivors. Unlike my father, Randy also offers advice on troubleshooting ill-behaved Jaguars. This went down so well that a translation won plaudits in a French Mac mag. It's also in Dutch and, er, Castellano. Several other TSers maintain sites I enjoy. Here's a handful from all over the shop: for giantmike in Wisconsin, 'Macintosh is THE rule' but there's more to it than that! Marcel in Antwerp never seems to stop "fixing" his museum, but it's usually open, Petra of somewhere I can't pronounce (Luleå) in Sweden sometimes defies us all at TS with 'mystery pictures', while 'Snuffy' of Nebraska invites us to "LOOK" at a quite different kind of design studio. In Georgia, Thomas is into photography in an international way. How about that for evangelism? 11:25:01 PM  link   your views? [] Naked diplomacy Avoiding punditry is not one of my strong points, but anybody expecting coherent and distanced reflections today on the rift in Britain's governing party broadened by Clare Short's resignation threat over war with Iraq will find me bemused. What a mess! A dangerous and worrying mess. I have long admired Short's career as Britain's international development secretary, which has taken in African countries the United States sought to win round in the UN Security Council ahead of France's current bid to do likewise. But I can think of no precedent for Short's weekend statements summed up by much of the media as a qualification of her own prime minister as "reckless" in his pro-war, pro-Washington line. My American friends, wherever they stand, can scarcely underestimate the seriousness of this breach of collective responsibility in a British cabinet. Hounds are already baying at the door, with talk of a ruinous "leadership crisis" on the very eve of war. If a semblance of unity were not paramount and Short's views failed to reflect a fair chunk of public opinion in the UK, she'd already be out on her ear and in the cold. She wouldn't have lasted a day. Yet I can't blame the woman for cracking under the strain and letting her conscience speak now, for all the damage it can only do to government. This state of affairs is rendered all the worse for a Briton looking in on his native country from abroad who sees no viable and serious alternative to the government it's got, a view which I believe many share on the island itself. Now there's a sound argument, which even I find it hard to refute for all my anti-war views, that Saddam Hussein would have done nothing at all to meet the demands of the United Nations without the massive military build-up on his doorstep. A related alarming development came in the Security Council on Friday, where I followed proceedings closely, as one or two key participants, and most notably Britain's foreign minister, led the debate away from the latest Hans Blix report and the issues on the table to ad hominem point-scoring and pleading. Jack Straw appeared sometimes almost to forget where he was in addressing himself directly to France's Dominique de Villepin. Several of us picked up on this turn of events as we worked and watched it all on telly at the same time. I hung around "after hours" to see what the Africans might say, but that brought no surprises: they were far too stuck to climb down off the fence. Blair is in very deep trouble. In the past, I've felt frustration and admiration in equal measure at the ability of successive British governments to maintain a balancing act between the "special relationship" with Washington and a professed commitment to Europe, but only as far as it has suited them. This has changed in four short months, perhaps for ever, let alone the stakes for the UN. Ah, a cud I should like to have chewed over dinner last night with my wise old friend Tony, had I not had other commitments. But I understand better a remark Monsieur Baudier made a couple of weeks back when he said: "Aujourd'hui, le monde politique est à nu!" So it is. Even the world of diplomacy has almost been divested of clothes and conventions as we start to see the boys - and the girls - fighting it out, rather than a focus on issues and ethics, while the veils that guise the interests have begun to lift. In part, the old media and the new have seen to this. Today, I shall be skimming what the pundits back in a deeply divided Britain have to say for themselves with considerably more than my usual attention. 11:21:42 AM  link   your views? []

lundi 10 mars 2003

Reading widely You ask, Mark, about the width of this page - sideways scrolling. Sorry about this, I don't yet know how to fix that and hadn't noticed before switching my screen resolution away from its customary 1152 x 864. But I've done some first fiddling in HTML, does it show? Nikolai Nolan masters that language (for some browsers) as he shows in presenting winners of the 2003 Weblog Awards announced at an "interactive festival" held yesterday in Texas. No defence, but now you mention it, many blogs are wide-screen affairs, with the kind of stuff I eventually want to put on either side. Britain's 'Guardian' chose its cream of the homegrown blog crop last September. Next stop, I'm told, the Anti-Bloggies. 4:44:48 PM  link   your views? [] Note de service: peut faire mal! Dmitri has already noted that the SNJ is collecting its dues (especially from candidates standing for election, but tout le monde is best up to date). There you go, Mr D, the painful reminder is posted. 4:28:16 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 9 mars 2003

My favourite things These exclude: - doing a big wash (have I really worn so many socks already this year?) - doing my accounts (and recollections of stern lectures about the state of them until I finally twigged what one of the "extras" with my first Mac was for) - tackling the window-boxes with only the haziest idea of what I'm doing (last year, the geraniums grew sideways afterwards) - completing my tax declaration (the machine crashes, in OS 9, if I try to listen to listen to music and scan the pertinent documents simultaneously). Taking on all these in one morning was lunacy, inspired only by a second day of sunshine so agreeable that I might even have launched into premature spring cleaning. "The bills have arrived and I've found no music..."; here's another of the (politer) variations. But enough being enough, I felt I deserved to avoid cooking my lunch and to repair to what a handul of us know, with affection, as "the canteen": On the left, the lights were on, as they are twice daily, 365 days a year, Elio was in the kitchen and served up 'the usual' with the usual Sunday extras and finesse. Any hope of catching up on remaining local gossip was dashed by the absence of most of the other habitués, leading the few of us left to conclude that either the remarkable weather had spurred on an early weekend exodus of Parisians or they they were still labouring over their tax forms. I gleaned merely that L'Entrepôt, the art cinema round the corner, has temporarily closed down, despite its latest facelift, "for security reasons." What were they showing recently? Then Monsieur Baudier, elegant literary lion of le quartier, made his appearance, inhabitually late at gone two o'clock, his tremendous mane of white hair ruffled by pulling over the universal practice of plumbers who never showed up when they promised they would. Once this gentle man's condition had been restored by a decent lunch from its frazzled peak to the normal low-level fretting, as he took his pen to a copy of 'Le Monde' to ring the latest causes of concern, I steeled myself for the bout of wordplay that is one of his favourite things. We managed to steer mainly clear of politics: good going. M. Baudier, like me, will always find something to worry about at the quietest of times. He merely observed how northern hemisphere conflicts have tended to start in or after the summer, including World War II in September and World War I in July-August. I've no idea whether this is generally true, but when I pointed out that it's now the mois de Mars, we were still hard pressed to find anything offhand. Might that yet be reassuring? Apart from plays and other writings which are noteworthy exercises in style as well as content, M. Baudier is also a dab hand at graphic design. He was intrigued (if appalled by some of the offerings published) to see that my own choice of reading, SVMMac, this month displays some of the more startling things you can do with a scanner. His own adventures with a photocopying machine never went further than the childish delight in mapping the lines of one's palm. The kinds of things Katinka Matson and company, as well as Richard Schubert & Co., get up to with a flatbed would astonish him. Outside, it's still lovely and just that kind of light. Time for a stroll. Perhaps I should take my camera. The power cord for the scanner's not long enough. 7:27:18 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 8 mars 2003

Ouangaladougou Wiser than occasionally he looks, Thomas refused to rise to Karin's bait and tweak the capital in his dateline when he reported on Fespaco 2003 during a busman's holiday to 'the land of incorruptible people'. Chicken! I'm sure some sub wouldn't have noticed. Apart from the Beeb, inevitably, and in, French, on RFI, African film events like this still get virtually zilch coverage on the Web. Much of the best regular black cinema news is to be found on US-based sites. 'tis a pity, if unsurprising. Thomas failed to come back with a noteworthy tan, equally unsurprising when the temperature was sometimes around 40°C (104°F). I await his travelogue with interest. A nice introduction to Burkina Faso, one of Africa's poorest and most intriguing countries, was put together by Peace Corps volunteer Cathy Seeley. One reason I bookmarked this was because it's also a good read for kids. I don't know what Ouagadougou means. 9:18:22 PM  link   your views? [] Of Pogue and Rogue Amoeba David Pogue this week triggered off yet more discussion, again at the NY Times, on the wrongs and rights of downloaded music with a multi-platform, mainly negative review of available legal download services: 'The Internet as Jukebox, at a Price.' At TS, meanwhile, Highmac was wondering about "recording streamed sound". Otherwise interpreted, he wanted to know if he could use his computer like a tape recorder for radio. Two recommendations came up: Streamripper at the Open Source software development site was one. I haven't tried it. Audio Hijack, the second at $16 with a 15-day trial period and this amusing icon, will "enhance the audio output of any Cocoa or Carbon application on your Mac", claim the makers, but more importantly to my ears, it "can record any audio being played through it to an AIFF file, for later playback." I've used it frequently with RealPlayer to save radio programmes. Very handy! Caution: direct download (Mac OS X, 2.1 MB) But those AIFF files can take up one heck of a lot of hard disk space, just like your average commercial 650MB CD for an hour or so of music. And what of getting Audio Hijack to behave even more like recorders, with a pause function and a timer? The Hijackers at rogue amoeba, as immodest as they are gifted, have thought of me and all the others who have yet to learn how to write scripts for such tasks. AH Pro does cost $30 (with a $14 discount for licensed AH users), but also offers now to record radio streams into MP3 format. Now there's a disk space-saver worth adding to the software wishlist. Here's hoping that what users choose to do with Audio Hijack doesn't send the rogue amoeba people, whose support and responsiveness to Mac OS upgrades is commendable, afoul of the industry and copyright hawks. 6:55:06 PM  link   your views? [] Breaking the ice The noise splintering ice can make is ear-shattering. "New evidence from a rapidly warming part of Antarctica suggests that ice can flow into the sea much more readily than had been predicted, perhaps leading to an accelerated rise in sea levels from global warming. "Many polar and ice experts said the new study, to be published today in the journal Science, suggested that seas might rise as much as several yards over the next several centuries. They called that prospect a slow-motion disaster, the cost of which — in lost shorelines, salt in water supplies, and damaged ecosystems — would be borne by many future generations." The teeny hassle with the New York Times site is the free registration obligation before proceeding to such articles, but that's swiftly done. Three or four years back, I read Antarctica, found it terrific! More, I'd imagine, on Kim Stanley Robinson, another day. When the climate's at the top of my 'worrywart list', I check in with the IPCC, whose Swiss-based site currently won't load, but GreenFacts is layperson-friendly! (Thanks to Heng Cheong-Leong at AppleMenu for the NYT article.) 4:11:43 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 7 mars 2003

OS X: Camino 0.7 ...is out (7.6 MB download). 10:38:40 PM  link   your views? [] Sex storm sweeps AFP's 6th floor Did I get your attention? That union-desk meeting has been set down for 1300 GMT on Thursday, March 13. We brought it forward because it may prove unwise to vanish the troops, even for an hour or so, beyond that date. The next time I post any notice like this, I shall simply call it Note de service. 10:15:53 PM  link   your views? [] Archangel Protocol Take a first-time novelist. Take a presidential election campaign. Take a New York City cop turned private detective who has been stripped of both badge and her LINK connection to one way the Web might evolve. Throw her former partner into jail, convicted of shooting the Pope. Add some Gorgons and a mysterious cyber-angel or two. Stir in varying strains of religious fundamentalism. Shake well and you'd have a recipe for disaster. Or you would if Lyda Morehouse doesn't pull it off. After a wobbly start with a surfeit of adjectives and scene-setting, 'Archangel Protocol' gets into fast-moving stride as a fine cyberpunk thriller to start the century. Lyda's site (caution: spoilers on the "fan fiction" page) adds news of what she's done since. Quite why she chose the 'Romantic Times' as her featured review beats me, but a quirky sense of humour marks her work! 10:01:50 PM  link   your views? [] Anti-American sentiment? Mais non! This was just bound to happen! Francis, my soccer-mad (and Mac-loving) newsvendor, kept a copy aside just for me - - along with the young one's "Don't you dare forget to buy it!" weekly dose of: Spirou, like several good things "French", is really made in Belgium, except that we don't always bother to say so, do we, Marcel? As I hope to make clear, products, people and ideas which come from next door, even Switzerland, are not all the French tend to "borrow". Borders can be a nuisance, except when trouble like the Chernobyl cloud hits them and decides to go and visit somebody else instead. So we were assured at the time. That title about "declaring war" scarcely needs translating, any more than the shock revelation that 'The French don't work'. There's a top-left chunk that says "France runs a high risk of being invaded by its new enemies. But that's no problem, the Germans are there to liberate us, according to the experts." Should 'l'iMonde' ('The Unspeakable' will do) prove to be a worthy addition to the 'Unchained Duck' (no official site), and not just a one-off, then it's one up to the satirical press. But don't be fooled, America. With a few vocal exceptions, the French still adore you. It's just that sometimes the God-fearing people who end up in the White House scare the merde out of them, just as they do some of the rest of us. The current belligerence is widely seen as one fundamentalism pitted against another. Some are held to believe that since the end of the world is already nigh, there'll be no harm in giving the Superpower a hand to speed it up. Nobody blames the ordinary folks who come and pack Le Louvre most summers. You'll see a Frog reading 'l'Imonde' at McDonalds. The smiles that greet tourist dollars are every bit as sincere as the warnings in the subway to stay the safe side of the painted white line. Back in the early '80s, when the dust from Mai '68 was long since swept away from the cafés near the Sorbonne on Saint-Germain and the Boul' San-Mich', French navel-gazers were debating whether a "consumer society" was finally taking shape. After all, this ran against the grain of tradition and religion too. Two decades on, a largely elder generation keeps its savings at the state-run post office rather than trust anything as overtly capitalist as a bank - and that habit makes for appalling queues if you just want to pick up a waiting packet on a Saturday. The consumer debate is over. Most of us here are every bit as ready to help warm the globe as anybody else. Kids have tellies in their bedroom and the diet of pap has long been as good as America's (heck, TF1 and several others even copy the best of it). The independent movie theatres have begun to realise what's good for them and go under or put a mainstream film on the list, even if it is showing just up the road. One of the few obstacles to progress left is the obstinate refusal of an excellent public transport network to fall apart, though it's been bombed since I've been here - a legacy of good old-fashioned imperialism which led France into another war, in Algeria, which you didn't even discuss in polite circles until recently. But people do try to send transport down the tubes. The rare and symbolic days when Parisians are told to leave their cars at home are blithely ignored. When I came back here after one trip abroad, friend Tony told me, "You know, while you were away, the pollution level got so high they had to invent a new scale!" I didn't believe him at first, the old tease, but it turned out he was right. So, don't worry about globalization, we're on board. The glaciers are even melting in the Alps. I've seen the striking effects with my very own eyes and talked to the people who live up there. Incomprehension doesn't come into it: for all the 'Vive la différence!,' the French look at America, like most of what they see and yearn only to be almost exactly the same. Remember the photos after September 11, those masses of flowers: the grief and the shock was heartfelt here too. What they don't like to the point of resentment is the tired old line: "How can a country prove so ungrateful to the brave boys who died to rescue them in 1918 and 1945?" There's no lack of gratitude, even if nobody likes being reminded about wars they nearly lost, especially when one of them should never have begun in the first place. Your average Frenchman takes the flag-waving with a pinch of salt. He and his wife will reply: "Sure, but since then, once Washington has bombed the hell out of [empty this space], they leave it to 'Old Europe' to pick up a large chunk of the bill and stay on to clean up the mess!" Indeed, your average informed French person knows that a people whose Constitution they admire very nearly as much as their own also helps to mend the damage. They suspect that Bush honestly does believe he will help make the world a safer place. "Those who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither liberty nor security" (Ben Franklin). I promised the reader who sent me that line to ponder it, not that I needed long. When I consider Franklin the man as well as the message, I see a different calibre from anybody in the top team today! This morning, after Bush's demand for "people to show their cards and let the world know where they stand" in the UN Security Council, I've done my best to stand back and zap the French airwaves. Comment caught at random: "...the Americans were right over Suez, but today they should be listening to us...", "the reports from Pakistan about Osama bin Laden could be seen as a very convenient amalgam...", "President Bush has spoken strongly; never has he has been so naked about his conviction...", "...Chirac and the British understand the Arabs well. Our ties are historic. Perhaps we are not so good at understanding Israel...", "...It is what, this menace to France? Saddam Hussein is not (French far-right leader) Monsieur (Jean-Marie) Le Pen...". I caught no mention, however, of comparisons between Saddam and Hitler. And if I quote no pro-Washington comment, it's not for lack of trying to catch one! Only earlier, on the BBC, did I hear what struck me as unfortunate diplomacy, when a US former arms inspector highlighted a rift between the British government and the British public, arguing that the latter, like the French and the Germans, have failed to grasp the nature of the threat. When you have allies, it is perhaps unwise to hark on the shakiness of their own power-base. My adopted compatriots are convinced that when it comes to the art of diplomacy, they remain Numéro 1. Their popular press may see Chirac seeking his Nobel Peace prize, but his foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, has emerged from relative obscurity as the most eloquent vocalist of the tune sung here. French people worry, of course, that the fallout from any mistake now is going to be so darned BIG that even the amount of money their fellow taxpayers in the United States may be asked to chuck into it as well won't be enough to fill the craters. The prevailing concern, now that war seems inevitable, is what happens afterwards. Fear and terror are universal. It's the response to them that comes down to individuals. Many are the leaders who can oppress the masses, rare indeed are those who can shape them. To take up the language of those who lie in their graves does not enhance political stature; it can merely show that a politician knows a good quote. Widespread French cynicism about politicians is far from unhealthy. I've not spoken to a French person yet who would want to see the conflict of views expressed by the leaders we're stuck with escalate into more than a difference between friends. 11:21:10 AM  link   your views? []

jeudi 6 mars 2003

Friendlink miscellany Truth to tell, I'm knackered tonight! Getting a story on this afternoon's horrible plane crash in the Sahara (Tamanrasset) wasn't easy for anyone. Before that, we had what would have been a mood crash, except that most of us knew already, when our desk chief had to explain what the big boss announced on there being no promotions or bonuses this year. None at all, apart from the "automatic ones". So there'll be an English desk union meeting in the next couple of weeks. Any points from abroad for this little session, whizz them through to me or to 'Sharpie', who has rejoined the Glutton for Punishment Club, and still finds time to have plans for his site. Last from the factory: Gillian is aiming for the Spammer of the Year award, which she'll win by next month. But you've just redeemed yourself, my girl, though I wasn't going to touch on this subject for at least a funny day. (Grovel in advance to those bound to say "Seen that before!") Oh, and quote of the day came from a senior staffer, up against one of many repressive regimes, when asked whether he could check with police about a multi-million fraud scandal lifted from the local press: "Oh dear, if you make me do that, it'll get me into a frightful pickle! They really only talk to the local journalists, you know!" By the way, Mr P., how's the swimming pool coming along? (I know you haven't got one... yet.) On the mood thing - or is this just in the "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" category - tacit has owned up to a blog. Where he leaves us in no doubt as to his mood. Very bright fellow, tacit, and not one to hide much under a bushel. I did tell him the "picture (warning: NOT work-safe)" was only an incentive to click. If you're in the office, find it for yourself: I'm not going to make it easy since a lot of what he says is fun. I like his website too. To a couple of friends in Africa. Hey, your card arrived this morning! Happy Christmas to you too. Fabulous stamps. I'll post you my own New Year's greetings tomorrow. Will you get them in time if I address them directly to the minister of information with a "please forward"? 9:35:38 PM  link   your views? [] Hooked The trial period is over. I like this software, so I've gone for the licence. You've spurred me on. :) Now I await only a little Blood and Stone. 11:37:24 AM  link   your views? []

mercredi 5 mars 2003

Branding the Matrix May means more Matrix. When 'Reloaded' arrives it had better be good. The first ads came out in the Métro just after Christmas, and that's pushing the record for advance poster publicity! I've been curious about the film's brandmark graphics and found the answer in the Jan-Feb edition of design magazine 'Création numérique'. Tim Girvin is among six people featured in the review's look at design trends in the USA (the others are Kyle Cooper, Fabian Geyrhalter, Mitchell Mauk, David Rockwell and Sohrab Vossoughi). Their work couldn't all be to my taste, but the dossier opened an interesting new horizon for me. The magazine set out to ask whether such American artists are leading the field these days. I'm not sure that it answered itself. As for Mr Girvin, he also keeps a personal site in considerable contrast to his corporate home. 8:50:32 PM  link   your views? [] Shades of grey The e-mail from Catherine, my former wife, said just one word this morning: "Smile!" Not that I don't, a very great deal, but this particular missive was addressed to others too and were this a good joke collector's blog, I'd post the attachments. Jonathan Sachs, who appears to be a controversial chief rabbi in Britain from the little I've read about him, preferred to see in Ash Wednesday in shades of grey, in his "thought for the day". Grey has always been my least favourite colour, especially the cloudy kind nearing on white-out. But Sachs had a word or two for people who think in black and white on the eve of conflict. He even informed us that in the Book of Genesis, the line after what God said is a bit odd: 01:03 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 01:04 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 01:05 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. I'd never lingered on that part of the legend before, but Sachs told us that the substance of those words "evening" and "morning" gets lost in translation from Hebrew. Such was his exposition of a transition through grey and of a bursting out of light that for a moment I could have been listening to a Chinese explaining some of the principles of Yin and Yang. Sachs's point was what you might do when confronted with a choice between two moral wrongs, the wrongness of war on Iraq and the wrongness of the actions of Saddam Hussein's regime. But that was his point, not mine. I'll move on to somebody else who made a case for shades of grey. Japanese film-maker Hayao Miyazaki, born in 1941 and little known in the west until 'Princess Mononoke' stunned many of us, kept his cards close to his chest in the first years of his own Ghibli (a Sahara wind) studio, rather than see his work savaged by others. But now he has no problem with being distributed by Disney, who hesitated over 'Princess Mononoke', perhaps for fear of seeing some greyer work eclipsed. When they released 'Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi' (Spirited Away), Miyazaki tells us in a recent interview for Les Inrockuptibles: "For them, it's like this: 'Will Chihiro beat the evil witch?' They can't see that the story isn't as simple as that. It's like when the President of the United States declares 'Either you're for us or you're against us'. If they have to simplify everything to understand, that's their problem." Lawyers are very good at studies in grey, but my father, who is one as well as a keen amateur painter, asked me at the weekend: "When did morality ever come into war anyway?" Well, maybe it doesn't, not very often, for all the propaganda that would have it otherwise. The politicians, however, remain very keen on morality and on justice, when it suits. Which brings me back to this morning's topic, the ICC in The Hague, an institution not to be confused, as some still understandably do, with the International Court of Justice. The Bush administration is far less keen on the ICC: US-ICC-Rwanda US signs 24th ICC immunity deal with Rwanda WASHINGTON, March 3 (AFP) - The United States on Tuesday signed a deal with Rwanda this week that gives US citizens immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The pact, the 24th so-called 'Article 98 agreement' the United States has entered into, was signed by US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Rwandan Foreign Minister Charles Murigande during a visit here by Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Washington refuses to support the ICC, arguing that it could become a forum for politically motivated prosecutions against US citizens, including civilian military contractors and former officials, and has been on a worldwide campaign to sign such immunity deals. Since last July, when the treaty creating the ICC came into effect, the United States has signed immunity deals with 23 other countries. The others are: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Djibouti, the Dominican Republic, East Timor, El Salvador, Gambia, Georgia, Honduras, India, Israel, the Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Micronesia, Nauru, Nepal, Palau, Romania, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Tuvalu and Uzbekistan. There you have it, in black and white, but I call this shady behaviour. Shades of Kyoto and an abandoned protocol. Shades of Durban and the US and Israeli walkout on a colourful UN conference on racism. Sure, I'll listen to the arguments on both sides, seek to recognise validity when I see it. I'm a Libra, after all, so if anybody's stuck sometimes between the white and the black, it ought to be me. But my favourite colours are saffron yellow and blue, particularly this one: It may be in need of repair, but it's still the best we've got. Let's not break it. I don't have a television and I've never seen Bush without that fearsomely earnest frown on his face, as if even he's not quite sure where the next word is coming from. Poet Adrian Mitchell had a line for what he's contemplating asking pilots to do. He likened it to unleashing "Jack the Ripper on a surgical strike". And that puts the fear of God into me. Try it, George. "Smile!" 8:40:30 PM  link   your views? [] Caseload pending Off to work "early" today. By my standards. I prefer going to bed just late enough not to miss out on lively moments for pals across the pond. I'd love to be in another hemisphere again, not just for the weather, but to able to see at first hand how much attention the media "down there" in southern Africa are paying to unfolding developments up north. The "hotspots" in Africa include Ivory Coast, of course, but there's also plenty of news from all quarters about the long-term fallout from that conflict of four years: the one Africans sometimes call their own first "world war". It will take decades to sort out what happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the fearful reign of Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko, that onetime buddy of the CIA. The death toll there, rarely headlined in the western press, is believed to be of the order of 2.5 million. Direct or indirect casualties. In recent weeks, I've seen case after African case lodged with the secretariat of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which officially gets inaugurated in the next few days. Those judges are going to have their work cut out for years to come. 10:05:01 AM  link   your views? []

mardi 4 mars 2003

Camino Project So Chimera finally became Camino when I wasn't looking, joining a pack of browsers with travel-related names - Explorer, Navigator, Safari... "We'll be releasing a stable build again soon, with the new name" In fact, I've used some of the "nightly builds" since the last one announced as "stable". So far so good. 8:07:46 PM  link   your views? [] Child's play How astonished I was to find somebody playing again with 'Dessinez, c'est Disney': I always managed to weasel out of Disneyland Paris and I'm mean enough usually to barter the ritual year-end trip to the Disney film against one I'd rather see myself. Occasionally, I'll grudgingly admit that "I didn't not enjoy it". But OK, hat off where's it due. Who am I to say that this ancient CD-ROM played no small part both in reconciling that someone with a Mac, when she was small, and in contributing to the design skills she manifests today? It remains one of the cleverest kid's play CD-ROMs around, chock-full full of intuitive options, satisfying squidgy tools and sumptuous sploshy noises. It used frequently to crash my printer, but doesn't any more, though when I last caught her at it, the game was being put to more subversive use than the manufacturer intended. I also suspect it crashed the printer through no fault of its own, but my own ignorance about allocating enough memory and that sort of thing. Why mention it now? Because I wanted a gift for another child, this was ideal, but the Disney store site says it's not available. Amazon disagrees - and has the merit of being cheaper. While stocks last and all that. 11:07:13 AM  link   your views? [] Not the weapons: the OPEC currency war By request. With some saying the war has already begun this week in the "no-fly zones", a couple of you with deep understanding of economic issues have asked for the updated version of W. Clark's detailed analysis: "The real reason for this upcoming war is [the Bush] administration's goal of preventing further Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) momentum towards the euro as an oil transaction currency standard." I found it via Indymedia. It sure is long, but worth the time and effort. Plus a host of links. 11:04:22 AM  link   your views? []

lundi 3 mars 2003

Afropulse A long-established, highly professional African news portal has recently taken another initiative by becoming host to Afropop. It's a nice job, but US-oriented, particularly on concerts and tours. A wider spread for the eyes and the ears can be reached via the African music webring (beware pop-ups), which is inviting more participant sites to add to a list of around 60. The portal I mentioned is allAfrica, daily imbibed with several others and the morning coffee. If anybody has more good world music gateways, I'd be delighted to hear from you. Oh, Emsie: remember that 3-volume CD I picked up during our mini-spree at the FNAC last year: The continent of one thousand drums? I've listened to all of it now. Twice indeed! A curate's egg, but the best bits made it worthwhile. Whether the neighbours agree is another matter... 8:13:20 PM  link   your views? [] Techsurvivors (1) While I'll undoubtedly post more about my choice machine and Apple-related phenomena, this won't be yet another Mac weblog. There are dozens of those, just as there are more Mac sites than I can count. Now when it comes to Macs in trouble, come some wet weekend I'll tell what I dare of the tale of Techsurvivors, how the phoenix arose from the ashes of a forum called NoWonder. The "Friday massacre" occurred on June 16, 2000, when people found that their favourite friendly computer help board had been bought out overnight by sharks who planned henceforth not only to charge for services freely rendered, but were poised to pillage and claim as their own a data base built up by numerous volunteers. Yup, that place was swiftly dubbed "NoLonger"! The title of the e-mail that got the ball rolling in the direction of TS still makes me smile: "I'm hoping you won't find this an intrusion..." No, Richard, it certainly wasn't! Last year, after a tour of absence abroad and shifts in domestic and working priorities, I decided on a back seat on the TS Executive Committee (or maybe the Exec opted for that!), but I still treasure ring-bound copies, no less, of the hundreds of e-mails which fuelled the fire under the phoenix. The evidence against us all, me included, remains intact. The people behind TS and many of the hundreds who have joined the community since are in part responsible for this blog. "What's that?" they cry. "Don't blame us for your ramblings!" Yes, but. But if it hadn't been for you folks, I doubt I'd have a Mac that runs like a Rolls most of the time, I'd be far more ignorant of its mysterious workings than I am, and life on the net would be much less fun! Should any Mac-user stumble on from here for the first time to the Techsurvivors forums, don't be put off if occasionally the site loads a wee bit slowly (for me, it usually comes up a darned sight faster than MacFixit) . A warm and multinational welcome awaits inside for the newcomer and the old hand alike. Rare is the problem that hasn't been solved. If it's not new, there's a good chance you'll find it in the archives. And it's no secret that far more competent minds than mine are tackling the software and server issues right now, a job best done well. A little patience is all it takes. Oh, and "OT" means "off topic". That's where people hang out their hair, though nobody's supposed to wash the linen as well. Give it a whirl. I used to be nervous of bulletin boards too, but not among this amiable crowd. 7:01:07 PM  link   your views? [] Now look what you've done! Truly, I'm chuffed. Thanks! Encouragement for this little enterprise from four quarters (and I can even say from Austria to Zimbabwe, no kidding). Well, now that the beta blog's been "tested", I shall venture further abroad with the ... with the, er, beta. Long ways to go yet and so little time. There's also TS to catch up with again, not to speak of the weblogs that inspired me, while my weekend is over tomorrow. As my long-suffering beta-testers already know, once you've sussed out my interests, the occasional interesting tip or offbeat snippet would be welcome and, of course, acknowledged if used. I've only received one of these so far (don't knock it, it took me more than an hour to do this with GraphicConverter and AppleWorks, so I don't see a future in graphic design): But I won't be surprised to get a few more. 6:27:55 PM  link   your views? [] Portable soap My cellphone gets used more by my daughter than by me, since I rarely have reason to spend all my monthly subscription, though I went for the cheapest rate. But since it undeniably comes in handy sometimes, she benefits, banishing me from the room when she calls her buddies. Not that she doesn't have one of her own, but it's a different system. I resisted pressure to get a mobile for as long as I could, only bowing to the inevitable after finding it virtually indispensable in Africa. Now there's a promising aspect of this technology. What to make of the 3G 'phones to be rolled out soon? I didn't know what 3G was until last month. I think it stands for the '3rd generation' technology; somebody will tell me if I'm wrong. "3G is all about customizing your personal mwallet and sending popular musical tunes as mobile ring tones." Or "3G is viewing video from your favorite soap or football game on the train or bus." Good heavens! The 'phone nuisance is bad enough on public transport, in the supermarket and meetings. Now I worry about what next Christmas's stockings might unleash. Will it really catch on? 10:50:59 AM  link   your views? []

dimanche 2 mars 2003

Watch your back, Steve! Of 47,000 staff polled in British companies, the "happiest" work for ... Bill Gates!! Dear, oh dear. So reveals the Sunday Times. Who comes 'bottom' of the list of '100 best'? A firm called Tyco Healthcare. But even its employees seem cheerful enough, so Micro$oft must be sheer heaven. Here are the full astonishing details. Oh, and Apple doesn't get a look in. Did anybody ask? (Thanks to Rachel F for this Sunday snippet.) 8:38:14 PM  link   your views? [] Mapping the web Normal weather resumes. Getting away from the gloom comes to mind. But travel takes many forms. Ever imagined, for instance, what it might be like to be a packet of data whizzing along a 'phone line? Neither had I until I saw Warriors of the Net It's a film made by some folks who then worked at the Ericsson Medialab. If you should want to check out a (5.3 MB Quicktime) trailer, click right here. The whole fascinating thing is a hefty but worthwhile 73MB download in a choice of languages, with an even bigger "luxury" version in English. Where do I find this kind of stuff? I''m fascinated by virtual maps. At Techsurvivors, of which more soon enough, some call me "Nick the finger". Ah, the day I got home to find an e-mail from my service provider informing me that I'd been accused of cyber-piracy! I learned my lesson then, and I've been discovering much more since. A good place to start is An Atlas of Cyberspaces. 7:24:55 PM  link   your views? [] Of cricket and empire I whipped off an e-mail to the Beeb this morning. The moon wasn't blue, but that's about how rarely I do this. (I was miffed at more hypocritical nonsense from a Bush minion on 'Broadcasting House' about the role of the United Nations, but that's all I had to think about the threat of war today.) I 'd begun in a displeased frame on mind. We Anglos in the land of the Coq and the Worm are fortunate to be able to listen to Radio 4 on long wave - except when cricket takes over, with scarcely a "by your leave", bang in the middle of something else! As happened again this morning. This particularly angers elderly or housebound Anglophile friends, seeking an alternative to the French airwaves but condemned for days to hour after hour of mind-numbing ball-by-blow verbiage. Worse is when it rains and still they won't take it off the air, in case the cloud lifts and the teams come out. This is the very essence of programming where nobody has anything to say, but they'll say it anyway, with increasingly dire sullies into wit. The only redeeming factor then is that the commentators have little choice but to listen to each other, which is more than they do during the matches. Now, I know I'm being unjust. There's always the World Service, though a surfeit of news and jingles can soon pall. We're a minority audience in a minority. On the 'phone from distant Abidjan, my friend Abhik did warn me yesterday that part of his mind wasn't on the job, not with India playing Pakistan in the World Cup for the first time since ... I can't remember when he said! ;-) Protest works! Some years back, the BBC announced a halt to its long-wave broadcasts to Europe. The prospect caused such uproar that a host of expats summoned a Beeb big-wig to a public meeting here. Not only did Auntie listen, she changed her mind, and we got an indefinite stay of execution. So one can hardly expect them to shift the cricket to a different wavelength too, I suppose. The core home audience has FM, and while I don't understand where the money comes into the cricket coverage, I'm sure that's the bottom line. Escape for some of us came with the Internet. Two years ago, I got a surprise visit at work from a fellow who joined the news agency I'm with at around the same time as me, but has long since moved on, became an excellent BBC correspondent reporting from a succession of front lines, and now does something important online. In that friendly way journalists have, David almost immediately cut the gossip of the years to tell me just how appalling 'my' agency's coverage was of some events. "We just use you for tip-offs," he fibbed snidely. "You think we're bad?" I riposted. "Let me show you the latest factual mistakes on the BBC Africa pages! And you didn't get all those from us." We swapped e-mail addresses to pursue our battle of insults, but of course we've never bothered. Stung by one of his more accurate criticisms, I'd remarked that "parts of BBC Online read as if it's being cobbled by kids out of college on a shoe-string budget". "Now there you're wrong," he responded. "It's one of our biggest investments. You'll see!" And I have. BBC Online has so swiftly become an empire! With a reasonably fast internet connection, you could get lost in there for weeks on end. I see that commercially, they have even set up as a host ISP. It's a pity, perhaps, that you need RealPlayer as well as QuickTime to make the most of it, but I know of nothing else on the net to match the scale of this particular media enterprise. I can't begin to imagine the server space they must use: colossal! There is a downside. My friend Tony is still stuck with the cricket because he doesn't have or want a permanent internet connection and 'phone bills are a very expensive way to pay for the Beeb. Another veteran of the printed word, rather than of the net, tells me that the library wing of the British Council here has become a mess almost beyond redemption. But not, it would seem, if you go online, Donald. And that's the problem, isn't it? Discrimination in access to information. The new empire has much in common with the old one. Don't forget, Donald, what I told you yesterday. You are still far more intelligent than that computer! That's why you can't always persuade it to do what you want. Even trans-Atlantic pals who are lost when it comes to talk of 'The Archers' need no longer be stuck, heaven help them. It can be mildly diverting during a long Sunday morning bath. Who won the cricket? 4:45:56 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 1 mars 2003

Nice driving, Herr Clauss iCab will long remain one of my favourite browsers. I particularly appreciate the host of printing options when I'm compiling my 'morning newspaper', where you can get exactly what you want to suit the site and save on both ink and paper. Alexander Clauss is among those tremendous developers who reply swiftly and helpfully to e-mails too. Not that I've ever bothered him about preferences it took me a while to grasp! His latest approach to these is yet another good idea. Until this week, they looked like this: This is what Alexander's done now: Rock on, taxi! 8:19:24 PM  link   your views? [] Lapins blancs Me, superstitious? I do reach for wood every time somebody says what a quiet day it is for "hard news". It's nice to concentrate on a feature story or two for a change. But with each new month comes the Kiss Problem. Who will it be? See, if you wake up on your own and you've kept a childhood habit or two, there must be "a pinch 'n a punch on the first of the month" and saying "white rabbits" to the first person of the opposite sex you speak to on that day. Followed by the kiss. Maybe that's my particular refinement over the decades. But without it I feel the next few weeks will be bad ones. This morning I was fortunate. I nearly went without a sandwich, reluctant to leap the counter at the street stall to plant a pecker on the unsuspecting owner, but her husband came forward at the last instant to serve me. I didn't have to open my trap until I reached the office, escaped with a no more than a nod to the uniformed watchwoman in the entrance hall, and found a British workmate for victim. And she even knew the tradition. I well remember the last difficult time, but I'm reluctant to tell all. It involved a slightly scratched cyclist, an irate car driver, yours truly ... and that policewoman. 6:57:11 PM  link   your views? []