FOSDEM 2009

I spent the weekend sneezing, coughing and drinking beer in Brussels at FOSDEM, in between there were a few sessions that proved interesting and irritating at the same time which is pretty typical for an open source conference.

First off Philipp Kewisch made a valiant attempt to get community support for QA'ing Sunbird only for David Ascher to have to say that Sunbird is canned after this clean up version and that Lightning won't be ready to integrate with Thunderbird 3 for the release. Asking around, it appears that Sun is withdrawing all resources for Sunbird. David Ascher didn't even seem that enthusiastic about Lightning as the calendaring component but I might have read too much into that.

More concerning is that the whole direction of Thunderbird is more about being appealing to the average user than it is to being a complete mail and messaging system. In answer to a question he made it clear he's not interested in trying to solve or even support the kinds of needs that corporate mail have, LDAP, Exchange integration and the rest of it.

They (Mozilla) seem more interested in how messaging is becoming proprietary with the increase in social networking sites doing their own email or messaging interface which forces the receiver of the message back to the particular web site.

Making Thunderbird another Gmail doesn't seem like the way to answer that 'problem' to me.

Ave Joost

I'm running the Joost client as my flu takes a grip. I'm not sentimental at all about software, its plastic and whilst it doesn't rust if the infrastructure behind it disappears then so does the service.

It so happens that I prefer the experience of the client as I can have it whereever I want on the desktop without the encumbrance of a browser.

But c'est la vie, it gets turned off today, probably about midday CEST.

But I can almost get the same experience as the client with a desktop widget undocked and if my flu continues tomorrow I might just finish it as that's about all I'll be able to manage.

419 gets a new twist

I received a lovely 419 email today which promises me US$100,000 as a way of repairing Nigeria's standing in the world.

It strikes me that a better kind of recipient would be someone who had already fallen for a 419 or pyramid scheme, like Santander, Abbey National, the SEC and scads of others that were sucked into Madoff.

Attention:

How are you today? Hope all is well with you and your family?,You may
not understand why this mail came to you.

We have been having a meeting for the past 3months which ended 2 days
ago with the present secretary general to the UNITED NATIONS,Mr.Ban
Ki-Moon and also with the Senate President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

This email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of
the world, the UNITED NATIONS/SENATE COMITTEE of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has agreed to compensate them with the sum of US$100,000 to redeem the country's image in the eyes of the world. This includes every foreign contractors especially in Nigeria that may have not received their contract sum and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government problems etc.

We found your name in our list and that is why we are contacting you,
this have been agreed upon and have been signed.

You are advised to contact Mr. Jim Ovia of ZENITH BANK NIGERIA PLC, as
he is our representative in Nigeria, contact him immediately for your
International Bank Draft of USD$100,000. This funds are in a
Bank Draft for security purpose ok?You can clear it in any bank of your choice.

Therefore, you should send him your full Names and telephone
number/your correct mailing address to enable the bank raise a draft in your name.

Contact Mr. Jim Ovia immediately for your Draft:

Person to Contact: Mr.Jim Ovia
Email: zenithbankplc.ng@orangemail.es


Thanks and God bless you and your family.Hoping to hear from you as
soon as you cash your Bank Draft.

Making the world a better place

Regards,

Mr. Kofi Annan
Former Secretary General(UNITED NATIONS)

2008 Book List

This is a list with, if I can remember enough about the book, a short summary of my reaction to it, of the books I've read this year. The list is in no particular order. The choice was militated as much by availability in airports as anything else.

• The Classical World, Robin Lane Fox
  I still haven't finished this but it is a remarkably unified view of classical history.
  
• Exit Music, Ian Rankin
  The Last Rebus novel, as ever I'm as much attracted by Rebus' taste in music as I am his generally fumbling way to the truth.
  
• American Gods (again), Neil Gaiman
  I reread this this year, for some reason the dread of the submerged cars in the lake didn't quite get to me this time. But I still love the idea of going Behind the Scenes.
  
• The Last Gospel, David Gibbins
  Pure Airline fodder I'm afraid, expect nothing of it and it will deliver it fine.
  
• TimeQuake, Kurt Vonnegut
  His last novel which reworks old material to a large degree but its Vonnegut from the perspective of the dying and in Vonnegut's Universe that's a curious place to view from.
  
• The Book of Air and Shadows, Michael Gruber
  I can't recall much of this at all.
  
• The Death of Dalziel, Reginald Hill
  This is the first of the Dalziel books I've read though I enjoy the TV series a lot. Dalziel (pronounced deeyell), is as direct and Yorkshire as you'd expect. I'll read more.
  
• The Shakespeare Secret, J. J. Cartrell
  More Airport fodder trying to be a little like Kate Mosse and a little like Dan Brown, the author is certainly better than Dan Brown. The visualisation of the Elisabethan theatre is I seem to remember very good. The thriller parts are so so.
  
• Revelation, C. J. Sansom
  Sansom is becoming a bit of a thing for me, none of the Reformation series nor his standalone novel have disappointed me at all. I haven't even read the series in the right order so I can see the character development over the three published so far. Highly recommended.
  
• House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
  There's an entire essay I could write about this but I won't, it might end up as a footnote to the book. If you like the semiotics of authorship, publishing and the interleaving of reality and proto-reality then you'll like this. If you find empty pages, or pages with one line printed on them irksome then give it a miss.
  
• Somnambulist, Jonathan Barnes
  To an extent this is Barnes showing off and Barnes showing off is sparkling indeed. For those that love the Victorian pastische. With lots of cream.
  
• Night Train to Lisbon, Pascal Mercier
  I don't have favourites of course but if I were pushed to it, this would be my novel of the year. Existentialism, Portugal and a repressed Swiss teacher, what could be finer?
  
• Azincourt, Bernard Cornwell
  A lovely romp through the Agincourt campaign and to be applauded if only for encouraging me to go and get Agincourt by Juliet Barker.
  
• Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon
  
• Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett
  The young adult books about Tiffany Aching and the Wee Free Men are both riotously funny and very, very sad.


• The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
  Being called his best by some. I'm not sure about that but the simplicity of the telling makes the difference.
  
• Un Lun Dun, China Miéville
  I loved this more and more the more I read it, hero/ines who aren't are the real hero/ine of the story will always get me.
  
• Anathem, Neil Stephenson
  I talked about this not so long ago, I think I prefer the alternate history rather than the alternate future of Stephenson but its nae bad for a'that. Having a French man as the Earth hero in a kind of homage to Planet of the Apes was fun.
  
• The State Counsellor, Boris Akunin
  I just love this series, can't help it its both knowing and surprising.
  
• The Embarrassment of Riches, Simon Schama
  I learned a lot about the Dutch and food reading this, but it seemed to be mostly about the food. I admit I found it a powerful good sleeping draught.
  
• Winter in Madrid, C. J. Sansom
  I thought I was going to hate this and bring up all sorts of comparisons with Hemingway, but I found myself trapped inside it. With the calls for reparation for the Franco atrocities its become topical as well.
  
• The Resurrectionist, James Bradley
  Another victorian pastische, not quite as successful it reminded me a little of a Charles Palliser novel but not as long, not nearly as long, which was a blessing. The ending appears to be from a different novel, which is, I guess, a pun on the Resurrectionist as a title.


• Agincourt, Juliet Barker
  I'm currently reading this and it shows the immense debt which Cornwell has to her for his novel (which he acknowledges), the blurb on the back says something about if its the only History book you read in a year to read this one. I'd hope you'd manage more than that but this and The Classical World would both be on my list.
  

I may add to the list if I remember any other highlights, there's at least one turkish author whose name and title I've forgotten for the present.

Peevishness

* Moderated comments is back on as I was bored with deleting all the spam.
* The tone of Robert Peston's voice, if there was any good news it would sound as if it were the last bright flash of a doomed civilisation.
* A delivery that should have arrived is now never going to arrive. (Bright spot, I shall save £17 VAT by reordering after December 1st).
* The weather. It was warm all night, flung off quilt the works, its got steadily colder and greyer all day.
* The cat threw up on a bed sheet whilst said sheet was still on the bed. He waited till I could watch him do it, I'm sure of that.

Incarnation #3

The first company that I ever started was called Support pc Ltd (cool name I know), but that really only lasted a year of consultancy as the business plan it was meant to carry out didn't get any financial support.

The second was Objective 2000 Ltd after I'd been Objective Software as a sole trader for the longest time and that was only dissolved last year as all my time was occupied with Joost.

So now I have the third and it was the simplest of all of them to start as I didn't do anything except choose an accountant to do it for me and take over all of the mess of running a company. I'm really very very bad at filling in forms and doing stuff like that on time so I was always in bad odour with some official body or other.

I inherit the name with picking one up off the shelf but its not a bad name, probably better than Satis Superque Merce anyhow.

I didn't even have to set up a bank account it was already done. Now I just have to send off copies of my id. As they've been so efficient at advising me and sorting it all out here's a free link to them Bailey and Associates

I've bought the domain G30consultants.com but that's all so far.

Weekend reading and listening

I've finally started Un Lun Dun by China Miéville which is another in the I suppose fashionable genre of fantasy for children that adults like to read.

And after the weighty length of Anathem I skipped through Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book which I guess really is a kind of Jungle Book, though I must admit it didn't really strike me that way. But it did remind me of Pratchett's Johnny and the Dead if only for showing how accepting children are of whatever their environment gives them.

Which precipitates the nasty thought that Baby 'P' probably loved his tormentors and only wanted to please them, which I guess he did in the end.

First of my downloads for the month from emusic.com is Skeletal Lamping by Of Montreal, which is gloriously anarchic, Zappaish and weirdly Todd Rundgren in the liking for Beach Boys harmonies.