bopuc/weblog

Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) - Wild World

Now that I've lost everything to you
You say you wanna start something new
And it's breakin' my heart you're leavin'
Baby, I'm grievin'
But if you wanna leave, take good care
I hope you have a lot of nice things to wear
But then a lot of nice things turn bad out there

[Chorus:]
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
It's hard to get by just upon a smile
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
I'll always remember you like a child, girl

You know I've seen a lot of what the world can do
And it's breakin' my heart in two
Because I never wanna see you a sad girl
Don't be a bad girl
But if you wanna leave, take good care
I hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware

[Chorus]
Baby, I love you
But if you wanna leave, take good care
I hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware

This song, and sadly Leo Sayer's "More than I can say" are etched permanently in my skull thanks to my first WalkMan and a Caribbean cruise I was stuck on at the age 6. :p

Tim Berners-Lee, in a public mailing-list discussion about a very specific technical thing, elucidates something that so many people forget...

Your grandfather would perhaps have suggested that an attempt to define the meaning of common words, as the Académie Française is set up to do, were a 'vain task'. Many would agree. But given that his water came to him through pipes connected, possibly, by half-inch British Standard pipe-thread connections, and he rode on rails set a certain distance apart by some committee, and his TV came for better or worse in 525 or 625 lines as decided by other committees, he may have respected that the creation of standards is a very valuable function, and an essential to progress.

When people meet to define W3C specifications they are not doing it out of vanity. They are performing coordinated effort of the parties who would like to be able to use the symbol. They are, in general, users and representatives of users of the symbol. They come together to allow those who follow them to use it. They often work long hours, receiving inadequate recognition for either products shipped or papers published, the conventional metrics of performance, so I would not call it vanity.

Note also that W3C (IETF, etc) specs have achieved a lot, made a lot of interoperable systems, and formed with each layer a foundation for building new layers. So I would not say that the work as been in vain either.

Tim

I would add that the W3C is a totally open and participatory organization. Any one of us, you included, can and should participate.

Aside; I really feel like I am watching re-enactments of Medieval society and it's wars. The Internet is rife with feudal struggles on every layer of the stack, it'd be funny if it weren't so scary.

This post started while thinking about "who do I look to as role models", which is a whole other post.

I'm pretty much an exact 50/50 blend of my father and my mother, in every respect, including temperament. My father was patient, thoughtful and cautious. Too much so. My mother was fast, impetuous, nimble. Also too much.

All my life I've battled these two (oh and so many others!) dichotomies in my demeanor. "I have infinite patience" I've heard myself say over and over.

Except when I am driving.
Except when I am barreling down a hill on a snowboard.
Except when I am in line for the cashier.
Except when that girl winks at me.
Except when I know exactly what I want and how to get it.

Hrm.

It's a lie. I've been using patience as an excuse, a stopgap, time-maker while I figure it out, while I think about it too much and convince myself out of whatever it was and miss the chance.

"A man with too much patience is a man who is unsure of what he wants."
That's the nice, thoughtful way of saying "Patience is for the insecure."

No I'm not going to turn into a "brute of action". I of course still appreciate the value of thinking it over, sleeping on it... but within reason. And I am now secure enough in my own vision and wisdom to lower the threshold of what I need to feel certain, my Required Certainty Percentage, some. Maybe even drastically.

I'm at a loss for words to describe this.
Johnny Depp on promo tour in Japan is audience to ... well... this.

Watch for the girls playing the synths. Incredible.

Part 1 and Part 2 (Youtube disabled embedding)

via Ado.

clearer:

Digitalism - Pogo
It's been quite of a while since i could experience your brightness
Now you've got a brighter smile and i think i'm going to like it
Talking 'bout the better things, you know how to maximize
Everything around you will become super-sized
You have to set up
Away from what matters
And get it prepared
Forward!

Also fun:
Zdarlight - Digitalism

Clair de lune from musanim on Vimeo

Gorgeous. More pieces here. From the Music Animation Machine, which isn't a machine at all. ;)

This fits perfectly with a thought I had last week about time: how the past is memory, the future, conjecture, and the present a separatrix, a non existing line, between the two, but how music seems to allow you to hang on to bits of now after the note has been struck, and anticipate what comes next...