En neu, oui?

Dinner just now included Korean Mandu (dumplings), which got me to thinking: not that long ago – I remember my parents having to do this – in order to have dumplings you’d pretty much have to make them yourself. It wasn’t impossible to buy them, just that the decent quality (fresh) ones were expensive or difficult to get, especially for a family where both parents work full time jobs.

I then proceeded to think that earlier generations had a lot of chores to occupy them – heck, I think I’m still scarred by my parents making *me* vacuum, dust and other exploitive manual labour.

Nowadays, it’s becoming increasingly easy to have these basic needs taken care of: technology has given us good quality food, even frozen dumplings, which are available easily and cheaply. Even things like Roomba vacuum cleaners are beginning to take over mundane chores for us. (Yes these are still nascent and we are far from close to being able to celebrate the end of vacuum cleaners everywhere.)

The trend that I’m talking about is the freeing up of time. As technology takes away more and more of our menial tasks, we are being given more and more time. Some use it wisely – for example my boss has a successful candle-making business on the side on top of his heavy day-job commitments – but I wager that a larger majority out there do not.

I count myself among those that don’t know what to do with themselves. My previous time-wasters – video games, movies, and surfing the Internet – are starting to become boring, and I’m struck by a heavy sense of ennui. Gardening is now the only hobby that gives me any satisfaction, being the one thing that is productive, i.e. one that creates something tangible outside of my mind.

It might be a sweeping generalisation, but I have a vague notion that the youth of the Western world is greatly afflicted by this same sense of ennui, and is the driving force behind all the petty juvenile delinquencies that we’re constantly seeing around us: graffiti, drunken behaviour, social unrest, etc.

Do you feel the same?

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N.B. Pardon the depressing topic. This entry was brought to you by a sudden urge to write a “stream of consciousness” instead of my usual edited-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life posts. You may also have noticed that this is my first post in probably 6 weeks, partly as a result of my blogs being “attacked”, which I might write more about later. I’ve also got some slightly better stuff in the pipeline.

Car ad

A very expensive accident in Monte Carlo, Monaco, involving several luxury cars - caused by a woman (http://yhoo.it/qcdR0j)

When it comes to gizmos and gadgets, women are usually less enthusiastic than men, with computers, electronics, and, well… machines generally being seen as the domain of males. They also have a reputation (however undeserved) for being bad drivers, yet when it comes to car ads “single female owner” is lauded as the epitome of custodianship and care. It makes no sense – a car owned and driven by a woman is more likely to have been involved in an accident, is not mechanically well-looked after, and – if you compare the state of the interior of Jenny’s car to mine on any given day – contain a mess of girly stuff (water bottles, shoes and other fashion detritus, etc.)

Now that I’m commuting to work, we don’t need two cars and I’m considering selling my Corolla. With the above in mind, here’s the ad I plan on using:

For sale: 2003 Toyota Corolla Ascent, Silver, Manual, Hatchback
Single geek owner. Maintained with OCD-level meticulousness; full service history with Toyota dealership despite otherwise sound financial judgement; always used the most efficient route to get from A to B (low kms); never crashed, although bodywork does contain minor dings and scratches as a result of skirmishes with malicious inanimate objects such as parking-lot pillars – but no structural damage to chassis; wind-screen wipers, air-con, etc. – used extremely sparingly in a questionable attempt at minimising wear-and-tear; I have never: done a handbrake turn, drifted around a corner, cut off other drivers and gave them the finger, had sex in the car. $7000 ONO.

Do you think it’ll work?

Idea: Thrashtags

The primary reason why I prefer to share my status updates on Facebook instead of Twitter is the ability to have “threaded conversations”. That is, Facebook’s comment functionality helps neatly group together friends’ comments and replies to my post, as opposed to Twitter, where any and all messages are independent Tweets in their own right.

The hashtag emerged as Twitter’s way of identifying similar conversation topics (I won’t explain what they are here; if you don’t know but would like to find out, check out this Twitter help page), but they aggregate messages from everybody that’s talking about the same thing. What if you wanted to have a very conversation with a specific group of people?

Introducing the Thrashtag (thread hashtag): a uniquely generated hashtag that allows you to conduct, identify and track specific conversation threads within Twitter.

The core concept is best explained using another tool from the Twitterverse – bit.ly. Shortened URLs are assigned a unique “hash key” – in the form of a sequence of random letters and numbers (e.g. 2bYgqR) appended to the end of the domain name (e.g. http://bit.ly/2bYgqR). Similarly, the Thrashtag service generates a unique hash (e.g. #2bYgqR) for use in Tweets, which allows conversations to be uniquely identified (“Thrashed”). Also like bit.ly, Thrashtags can be assigned to a registered user, who is designated the “conversation starter” (a “Thrasher”).

The key here is not building Yet Another Twitter Client. Rather, the objective is to build a database of Thrashers/Thrashtag pairs and provide an API allowing developers to incorporate Thrashtag functionality into their own clients. The goal is to refine the idea of being able to have threaded conversations on Twitter and explore what value that would bring to the overall microblogging experience.

Antenascent

Little girl, where are you
Why’d you miss our rendezvous
Would’ve loved to parlez vous
But now you never were

Little boy, meek and mild
Brave and strong or rough and wild
Still, you would have been my child
But now you never were

Guileless mother, precious load
Paid the Beast a debt not owed
Solemn in your fading glow
It’s like you never were

If ears could cry

Just when you thought the most harm I could ever do to you on cyberseraphic was to assault your eyes and mind with pictures and prose, I’m taking my affrontery to the next level and introducing… dun dun duuuuuun… audio. But before we get to “the goods” let me first set the scene by saying that this post is me making good on a promise to fight the tide of too much awesome – my squeaky ode to ordinariness, if you will (although you may well substitute other, more derogatory words for “ordinariness”).

For my musical debut, I chose to mangle the song Teardrop by Massive Attack (I warn you now, you’re probably better off not clicking that link until after you’ve finished reading/hearing this post…) The unassailable magnificence of this emo anthem lies in its impenetrably vague lyrics. Everybody that hears it has their own unique interpretation – whether Elizabeth Fraser is singing “feel the sunlight, pray” or “feathers on my breath”, and whether the song is about abortion, futility, grief, etc. – you name it there’s somebody out there arguing passionately that theirs is the One True Meaning.

In addition to the instruments I already own (a violin and a cello), I bought the sheet music from musicroom.com (~$3.55 in Aussie Dollars) and the GigDaddy Multitrack Mixer app for iPhone for $3.99. And this is what I came up with after about half an hour of stuffing around:

Feel free to donate towards an autotuner, and maybe some lessons.

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For the record, here’s what I think the lyrics are. It’s not a common interpretation:

Love, love is a verb
Love is a doing word
Feathers on my prayer
Gentle impulsion
Shakes me, makes me lighter
Feathers on my prayer

Teardrop on the fire
Feathers on my prayer

Nine night of matter
Black flowers blossom
Feathers on my prayer
Black flowers blossom
Feathers on my prayer

Teardrop on the fire
Feathers on my…

Water is my eye
Most faithful mirror
Feathers on my prayer
Teardrop on the fire
Of a confession
Feathers on my prayer
Most faithful mirror
Feathers on my prayer

Teardrop on the fire
Feathers on my prayer

You’re stumbling in the dark
You’re stumbling in the dark