They were asking for it...

While shopping at Sainsbury's the other day took quite possibly the most ironic photo ever... look at the name of the snack and the state of the boxes ..

Informa-shun

You've got mail!
(And blogs.)
(And social networks.)
(And RSS feeds.)

By the way, you also have a pile of work and some real life obligations to attend to.
We've all read articles that refer to the "Information Overload" present in our modern daily lives. Humans are naturally curious about the goings on around us, and the Internet feeds this hunger to an extent previously impossible.

We have a fascination with information, likely a product of our evolution. Simple reasoning was key to our ascent to the dominant species on Earth. This information hunger is difficult to turn off, as the information gatherers have probably been favored by nature.

Modern information exchange is very different, even compared to a couple of decades ago. Mass media was previously synonymous with truth. Over time the ability to reach a large audience has become more and more accessible, culminating in the Internet, which is truly a many-to-many medium. While it is debatable whether this fosters incestuous thinking or greater detail, you can't deny that no single person can aggregate all of the daily information updates available online. That doesn't stop some of us from trying.

The more information we can absorb the more we take on, until efficiency begins a downward trend and we step back to assess what is important and weed out the noise. We are naturally good at this filtering (unless your television is stuck on Fox News)

Google Reader haunts daily. Its repetition through aggregation of multiple news sources is maddening. Today 8 feeds have been removed. Digg may bring you up-to-the-minutes on the latest collegehumor videos, but does anyone really need that? Wired news stays, because it may be slower, but It is fairly concise.

I propose a feature addition to the Reader devs, something that marks articles as read after sitting unread for X amount of time. Personally, about 12 hours would be ideal. I feel like I am missing something if I simply 'Mark all as Read', but if someone does it for me it is more akin to not buying the newspaper the previous day. News has a short shelf life, but it can be hard to quantify.

If you find yourself stuck with a pile of unread articles, don't fear the reaper -- just mark them as read and start fresh. If it is important it will resurface countless times within a week.

They All Fall Down..

A tragic day here as the Wall of Guinness Cans has finally toppled. The details of how are unimportant. What do I do with a floor full of cans? I get back on track with my reason for collecting them in the first place: Stop motion animation of course! .. Stay tuned

(yes, the ones standing landed that way)

Bill Fife

I admit what I did was wrong.

Usually that isn't enough, but this time it seemed to work.

I had just stopped at a coffee shop and was riding my bike home on a route different from my norm. I was turning toward home when I came to a sign that I believed showed cycling was allowed on the pavement (sidewalk) in this area. The area itself having a very narrow road and being extremely quiet, this all fit together in my mind. The round symbol with a cycle in the middle didn't look ominous, didn't have an X through it or anything.... And everyone knows you aren't normally allowed to cycle on the pavement anyway, so what could this sign mean other than 'please cycle here good sir'?

It meant 'no cycling'. Luck of all luck a uniformed member of the London Metropolitan Police force was there to greet me (he was on foot). He looked none too happy. He asked me to stop for a chat. He quoted the exact paragraph/section/etc of the law stating that cycling on the pavement is not allowed. I explained that I must have misunderstood the sign, at which point we walk over to take a look. The sign has a bicycle in the middle and a red circle around it .. ok, makes sense, I'm an idiot.

He says "So by your own admission you were cycling on the pavement next to (insert road name here)?"

Me says "I was, you saw me and stopped me."

He says "Do you believe I should give you the £30 ticket associated with your actions?"

Me says "Well as far as I know ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating it, however in this case I would hope that it might lead to you being a bit lenient. The fine itself is unnecessary, and I will not be doing this again."

He says "Good day." (and walks off)

I'd love to be proven wrong, but it seems cops universally have no sense of humor.. :-/

American Idle

The bad: (what better place to start?)

There are plenty of pretentious asshats "don't watch tv". Consider me one if you'd like, but I truly hate most tv. I would blame those poor writers, but they're victims of repetitive storylines as much as us. Their goal is to keep us watching, dangling the carrot just far enough out of reach. I've fallen for this plenty of times. Where are you left when a show reaches the end of its run? You remember a few amusing one liners and experience short term feeling of withdrawl.

In recent years I've developed TV-ADD. I challenge you to the following:

1. Buy or download the first season of a popular show (I recommend 24 or Prison Break).
2. Watch the full season beginning to end in under two weeks.
3. Realize that the end of every episode is a cliffhanger that makes you feel like a resolution is just around the corner.
4. Try not to destroy your TV when you realize that the whole thing was a farce or just the beginning, because season two is also just around the corner.

I remember wasting hours of my childhood watching various sitcoms. They left us with the moral solution to most of life's common problems (solutions that would most likely just lead you to getting your ass kicked in reality).

Overuse of special effects to replace a "plot" can also get f#$ked. Seriously when I was a kid I had 100X the creativity/imagination of these masters of blowing sh!t up, but they stole it. Thanks to these guys I wonder what percentage of people on the planet don't realize humans have never been past the moon? Why? Because in real life going into space on our fastest rocket is boring. There probably isn't much to do out there, you are stuck with the same boring people, and your Internet connection is going to suck.

The good:

Movies are great. They are made to be a set amount of your time. I don't feel like I'm being conned by a good movie. I hate superhero movies (except noted below). They all end annoyingly predictably.

Jon Stewart and Dave Letterman are entertaining. I think Stewart is sort of a comedic sensationalist, like a bizarro Bill O'Reilly with a grin, but he makes me laugh. Letterman has been the smartest guy on TV for nearly as long as I've been alive. He purposefully dumbs it down a bit, but you can see that he is a diabolical genius. He manages to get bits of political commentary in without some folks noticing. Good job Dave.

I like Batman. Batman isn't a superhero. He's a bad guy who happens to be the enemy of other bad guys. Batman is angsty about doing the right thing, cause doing the right thing is f!@#king hard sometimes.

FOOTball

Attended a match of the type the rest of the world loves.

Yesterday was perfect by London standards, 60 and sunny. Great day for a game. We saw West Ham play against a team in blue shirts. (yea yea, I don't remember) To me soccer is akin to hockey. I can't stand to watch either on TV, but I find the games riveting in person. I think even some skeptical Americans would agree. The game doesn't stop, save for once at halftime. I love that. (surprising considering my favorite sport, baseball, is all about suspense and waiting)

I still refuse to choose 'my team' in the Premiership. I don't have a history with any team, which means when I get punched for supporting the wrong team in the wrong place I'll just feel stupid as opposed to justified.

The match was a draw, which apparently means they hold a three-legged race to determine a winner. We didn't stay for the race.

Superbowl-o-rama

I've been doing a lot, but I forgot it all (per usual) .. But yesterday was interesting....

I had been considering having a Superbowl party at my flat on Sunday, but being the worst organizer on the planet I forgot until Saturday. (It didn't help that I was in training out in Reading from Wed-Fri.) I did round up a couple of interested folks (one is even a Brit) and we made our way to a pub down in Chelsea.

We arrived way early, but my oversized Canadian amigo and I were hungry, so it worked out well. We were able to secure one of the few tables that hadn't been reserved and had a decent view of the TV.

What a game.

Too often it tends to be one sided, but this was a low-scoring battle all the way. It was amazing to see the Patriots unable to protect Brady from any advance. I was rooting for the Giants, because I hate every Boston sports franchise .. (thank the Redsox) The bar was probably 60/40 Giants to Pats. Probably 98% American. (Though our waitress was a Canadian sporting a Chicago Tribune smock ..)

By halftime the Canadian needed to head out (This was about 2am local time, so hard to blame him). Luckily by the 4th quarter we had traded for an interesting character called Scout. She was rooting for the Patriots, which meant a wager was made nearly immediately. (yes, I won the £1). It was amazing how many people stayed for the entire game, which didn't end until approx 4am!

Btw, I think it is quite a misconception that Brits don't like football. Last year I was here to watch my Bears play in the big game, and there were hordes of Limeys wearing Urlacher Jerseys.