Thanks to the rather clunky title of this post you may already have guessed that you’re in for a special treat! So without further ado, here it is, pictures of strange figurines put up in the Prater, Vienna’s own fun-fair and more. Check out the pictures by clicking the picture (oh, I can be poetic at times):
flock together.”
As you may have guessed from my rather slick introduction, I just discovered Flock, the newest in cool Firefox-altered technology.
It’s basically a slick, modded, Web 2.0 compatible version of the ever so popular Mozilla Firefox browser. Of course, it’s still very much in Beta (Alpha even?), but apart from a few quirks (like not being able to import my Firefox bookmarks), it seems fairly stable.
Now, I’m very fond of software coming from the corner of 37 Signals, Wordpress, etc., and Flock seems to be quite attached to Wordpress. So much even, that once you’ve installed Flock, you can sign up for Wordpress.com, the hosted Wordpress service which until now you needed an invite for. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that although I really like how usability and cool are now together at last, I’m still quite uneasy about the whole social software thing. You see, Flock is based on the premise that everyone’s Internet experience would be a whole lot better if they shared their bookmarks via delicious. Now, I do know that it’s not necessary to do that. Flock lets you decide if and what and with whom you’ll share. Still, and I think I wrote about that already a few months back (yep, I definitely did…here’s the post), I am a bit wary when it comes to the whole thing called Web 2.0.
I think it’s great that services like Flickr and del.icio.us and by now countless others offer the ability to share whatever you deem shareable with everyone on the web. But, and I won’t tire emphasizing on that over and over again, I don’t like the idea of storing my photos or bookmarks on some server somewhere in the world. I also don’t like the idea that full disclosure of my bookmarks, is just one (accidental) click away. I think del.icio.us is a great Zeitgeist tool, but I don’t think it should be used as a replacement for local bookmarking.
By the way, I wrote that entry via the ultra-slick, integrated-into-toolbar blogging tool provided by Flock, and I guess once they’ve worked out its kinks, I’m going to use it a lot more often.
In times like these I probably shouldn’t be so quick as to confess that I’m a fundamentalist. But all things considered, I guess I am. Here’s why:
I’m calling for a complete and utter privatization of sports. No excuses (except maybe bowling..but that’s it). And I’m rather fundamental about it, meaning no public display of professional sports, no sports on TV or in the news (including Internet news-sources of course). If I were a militant fundamentalist, I would let the bombs speak right now. But I’m rather civil, so here’s my explanation why:
There are people who think it’s admirable to spend life torturing your body in order to become the person who can jump into a pit of sand the farthest. I, as you may know, am not one of these people and I feel nothing for these people except contempt and pity. Interestingly though, there are people who admire pit-jumpers and the like, and who spend whole days in front of the TV watching these people do their thing. And once again I would leave it at contempt, but if you are living in a flat which receives two proper TV channels, and you’re living in a country where these channels are owned by the state, and although they show shitloads of commercials, they still collect about 20€ per month from you for the privilege of receiving their channels, and when they then decide to show soccer, tennis, winter-sports, water-ball and all kinds of other stuff on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturdays, Sundays, well, then it’s time for me to call for a complete and utter PRIVATIZATION OF SPORTS.
Let these people jump into pits, but let them do it in the privacy of their homes. I’d really be interested to know who’d be willing to turn a perfectly fine body into an obscene accumulation of muscle and absence of body fat if there’d be no people cheering for their sorry excuse of a profession, and if there were no companies who’d pay for their expenses. I wonder if David “The Brain” Beckham would still go to work in Spain if he’d earn as much as the shit he’s doing is actually worth (which, by the way, is nothing)? Suddenly, sports wouldn’t be that great, right? Suddenly, the next time one of those people would sit in the sand, or on the tennis-court or just any place where professional sports people sit, they’d notice that doing something professionally which should have been private from the beginning (and yes, ancient Olympic committee, I’m talking about you….just because you did it in the nude doesn’t mean it was right) was a really, really bad idea.
So the next time YOU watch professional sports on TV, why not turn it off, write an angry letter to the athletes and the TV station and demand a complete and utter privatization of sports (and since you’re at it your money back as well).
Well, here it is:
It took of course ages to get to Austria, and it took another age and a half to get to my place in Vienna. But, it’s here, and thus, officially, the disaster I blogged about is resolved. Well, kinda. You see, back when I ordered that shirt, sometime in the 1980s, I still had the physique which was referred to as Adonis-like by some people (not by me, as I’ve always disliked that label…I usually stick to “Greek God-like”), thus ordering a size corresponding to above mentioned body. Unfortunately, time has not been kind to me, and now the shirt is just a tad too small. Oh well, at least it’s an incentive to go swimming twice a week instead of just once.
Since I’m known for my early adopterness, I’ve decided to early adopt that new service called “Remember the milk“. It’s one of these fabulous new services which are extremely well made, intuitive to work with, abundant with interesting UI ideas and most of the time absolutely free. “Remember the milk”, or “milk” as I’ve decided to lovingly call it, is a task manager, and although it bears quite a resemblance to the Tada list of 37 Signals fame, it seems just a tad more flexible and powerful. I’ve already created a nice todo list for today, which consists of the most vital things I need to do today. Namely buying ingredients for tonight’s lasagne and gettings some DVDs.
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