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In my post on the wrong kind of rain the other day I talked about how water is something that you can’t remove from the system. All other food systems can be broken down you get cows by applying two parent cows to a field and some hay and proving them with some water. And to get the grass they need the grass needs water too. It all comes back to water in the end. Water is axiomatic in a way.

There is another weird cross-over with water too in that it has traditionally been one of the most difficult things to deal with when doing special effects, because it’s the one thing that you can’t miniaturise. You can make an entire town at 100th the size and have a giant stay-puft marshmallow man walk around the city and when you show it on screen it will really look (well almost) like the stay-puft marshmallow man has come to New York. But the same isn’t true with water. To make a load of water run down a city street and look convincing you’ve always had to actually put a whole load of water in a street which is a tad expensive. Because the problem is that when you see some water running in the middle of a miniaturised set you can immediately tell that the water is too big. It just looks wrong, because you can actually tell that it hasn’t been miniaturised. You can see some examples of where they just decided to go with it in such movies as Die Hard 3 and one of the Indiana Jones movies (I can’t remember which).

Now of course cgi has ruined my point because you can shrink the water by the appropriate amount in the computer.

Finally in Britain we’re getting the kind of weather that makes us feel like we deserve the drought orders that we’ve been having. It always feels to me a particularly un-British thing that we aren’t able to collect rain properly. I mean – rain? Rain is kind of what we’re famous for!

But actually we’re famous for invention too and so in many ways we’ve been hoisted by our own petards.* (To see how the umbrella was invented: See
Who invented the cocktail umbrella?)

The thing is that we don’t keep very much of the water that we do collect. Most of it seems to leak away because we were so early with the invention of pipes and water systems these water systems are now starting to look a bit worse for wear.

The worst news is that while we’ve had the driest winter for a million years (or thereabouts) we’ve also had one of the wettest springs. The reason that this doesn’t work out for us is that by the time all of the rain showed up the trees and plants were already in full flow and so they’ve been taking all of our water.

What this tends to mean is that the trees and plants will end up doing really well this year, which in turn will mean that there will be more food for the vegetarian animals which in turn means there will be more food for the carnivore (and omnivore animals) which means that more animals will drink more water which means there will be even less for us.

The only problem is that we’ve detached ourselves from the regular food chain, so the fact that there would be a bumper amount of animals this year which should yield us with more water (meat contains water, and the more bounteous the meat the easier it is to kill therefore using less water) doesn’t get to affect us.

The whole meat and vegetable production has been taken out of the normal food chain by farming. But water supply is something that we’re still susceptible to. We can always make more animals and plant if we put our mind to it – we believe – because all you need to do is replicate a food chain. The one problem is that there is only one thing that you can’t avoid. Water. You need water every step of the way and we can’t replicate that.

* By the way Petards** are bombs. So being hoisted by your own petard is to be thrown by your own bomb***

** It is also French for farts.

*** It’s from Hamlet – Poor Yorick****

**** I knew – Ed*****

***** I thought your name was Horatio – Ed Harris

If you’ve ever wondered what we need to do if we want world peace then look no further I have the solution!

I think all we need to do is get the European Union in on this whole thing. We’re always being told that they make crazy laws that affect our very existence and this is one of those situations where a crazy law might be exactly what we need.

What we need to do is marry off all of the European royal families to those in the royal families in the middle east thus creating a bond which protects us from war.

We need to literally go medieval on the royals and make them marry the ruling class of the countries around the world that we have problems with right now. That’s what always used to happen in the old days so why not now?

People are always complaining that the royal family doesn’t do anything. So why not this?

Okay I can hear what you’re saying what about the way that the European royals seem to be dying out at a rate of knots and there are so many far east dynasties it’s a wonder anyone can keep track of what’s going on. But I have a solution for that too. All we need to do is get Prince Harry to marry every single on of the royal princesses out there. Because according to the Muslim faith many wives are acceptable as a premise. So why not get him to marry as many as there are and we’ll see if we can get some traction on those peace talks.

It’s got to be worth a shot!

“I gained laitude through platitude”

and

“Eating your fruit by the light of the silvery spoon”.

A few years a CEO called Bill Swanson ago wrote down what he claimed were the 33 unwritten rules of business. Of course they have now become known as Swanson’s Unwritten Rules which seems a bit silly.

Although there is a little management-speak in there the points seem to actually be really right on the nose. And pretty interesting.

One of the rules has risen above the rest and is now often used by CEOs to rate their managers it is rule 32: A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person.

Its a long list but worth it:

SWANSON’S UNWRITTEN RULES

1: Learn to say, ‘I don’t know.’ If used when appropriate, it will be used often.
2: It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.
3: If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much
4: Look for what is missing. Many know how to improve what’s there; few can see what isn’t there.
5: Presentation rule: When something appears on a slide presentation, assume the world knows about it and deal with it accordingly.
6. Work for a boss to whom you can tell it like it is. Remember, you can’t pick your family, but you can pick your boss.
7: Constantly review developments to make sure that the actual benefits are what they were supposed to be. Avoid Newton’s Law.
8: However menial and trivial your early assignments may appear, give them your best effort.
9: Persistence or tenacity is the disposition to persevere in spite of difficulties, discouragement or indifference. Don’t be known as a good starter but a poor finisher!
10: In doing your project, don’t wait for others; go after them and make sure it gets done.
11: Confirm the instructions you give others, and their commitments, in writing. Don’t assume it will get done.
12: Don’t be timid: Speak up, express yourself and promote your ideas.
13: Practice shows that those who speak the most knowingly and confidently often end up with the assignment to get the job done.
14: Strive for brevity and clarity in oral and written reports.
15: Be extremely careful in the accuracy of your statements.
16: Don’t overlook the fact that you are working for a boss. Keep him or her informed. Whatever the boss wants, within the bounds of integrity, takes top priority.
17: Promises, schedules and estimates are important instruments in a well-run business. You must make promises — don’t lean on the often-used phrase: “I can’t estimate it because it depends on many uncertain factors.”
18: Never direct a complaint to the top; a serious offense is to “cc” a person’s boss on a copy of a complaint before the person has a chance to respond to the complaint.
19: When interacting with people outside the company, remember that you are always representing the company. Be especially careful of your commitments.
20: Cultivate the habit of boiling matters down to the simplest terms: the proverbial “elevator speech” is the best way.
21: Don’t get excited in engineering emergencies: Keep your feet on the ground.
22: Cultivate the habit of making quick, clean-cut decisions.
23: When making decisions, the “pros” are much easier to deal with than the “cons.” Your boss wants to see both.
24: Don’t ever lose your sense of humor.
25: Have fun at what you do. It will be reflected in you work. No one likes a grump except another grump!
26: Treat the name of your company as if it were your own.
27: Beg for the bad news.
28: You remember 1/3 of what you read, 1/2 of what people tell you, but 100% of what you feel.
29: You can’t polish a sneaker.
30: When facing issues or problems that are becoming drawn-out, “short them to the ground.”
31: When faced with decisions, try to look at them as if you were one level up in the organization. Your perspective will change quickly.
32: A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person. (This rule never fails).
33: Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, an amateur built an ark that survived a flood while a large group of professionals built the Titanic!

Postscript: The qualities of leadership boil down to confidence, dedication, integrity and love.

The Senate Committe on Commerce, Science and Transportation is considering ammending the 1996 telecomunications act in the states to end “network neutrality”. This would allow telcos to charge you a different rate depending on the kinds of things you do on the net. Eg. Pay more if you’re using VoIP or filesharing.

I talked about the VoIP thing in this article: Why iTalk?

Bill Thompson talks more about, Why the net should stay neutral on his BBC blog.

The great thing about VoIP is that it has changed the way I use my computer. Not just by having me be able to talk to people on my computer an act which might be considered to render my computer as just a telephone for that time. But I now am able to enjoy the phenomenon of shared browsing.

Basically you and a friend are both looking at similar sites on the web, totally able to browse independently. And whenever you see something interesting you call out about it. You describe it, and then you send the link over. Because the phone call is free, it doesn’t matter if there is extended silence. You’re just getting on with stuff, and then when you see something interesting you send the link and chat about what you’ve seen, but you don’t have to stop looking at new pages to do it (like you used to in typed chat).

The big problem is the future of VoIP. What is skype’s end game? Maximum usage of the system would mean no business plan, because everyone would be online and there will be no need to dial out at the other end.

More and more isp’s are providing VoIP applications and implementations of their own. Any why is this? Because soon enough there will be a port blocking equivelent. Remember back in the day when you could change to any isp you wanted but you could only send e-mail from your web address if you were logged in to that isp? Well, that will be VoIP soon I think. You will only be able to make calls with your own ISPs software so the revenue stream is intact.

you start to wonder if the mint from one more Mojito would mean you won’t have to brush your teeth in the morning.

The Sun newspaper’s headline today was a good stab at perfect illiteration as they reported the Abu Hanza story with the following mast:

Hook’s Bomb Big Ben Book

which is good except surely better is:

Baddie’s Big Ben Bomb Book

Yesterday Intel became the main processor providor for Apple finally bringing the 8086 architecture to Apple computers for the first time (well that’s not strictly true because of the ill faited dual processor computers which promised so much until “somebody” killed them).

And what was the Apple share price at close of business yesterday?

$80.86

No really.

Apple’s share price an in-joke for Intelites