Soylent Green 23

On 10 Years of Reading

2007-10-24T15:15:00.001+01:00

llibreria,
originally uploaded by Mor (bcnbits).

My literature project has been in full swing for ten years now. It
started when I took a year out between school and university, and I
was brow-beaten by a co-worker who looked down at me for watching so
much television. That year was one of the best years of my life for
reading - I covered a great many of the classics, like Moby
Dick, and a lot of H.G. Wells. It marked the beginning, and over on librarything I'm keeping track of everything I've read since that year. What came before, I've hurriedly buried in the depths of my memory. Sure, I read before I was eighteen, but what did I read? Star Trek and Star Wars novels mostly. They weren't a waste of time - Peter David (Star Trek) and Timothy Zahn (Star Wars) are two excellent writers, and I thank them for helping me stick with reading in the first place. But as much as I read, my father would never say that I was 'well-read,' and with the added motivation of showing my co-worker I was no dullard, I set about my task.

Ten years later, I'm about to finish reading book number 300. This
happens to be "The House of Mirth" by Edith Wharton, which I am very much enjoying. But as much as I'm enjoying reading new books, I think it's high time I revisited some of those that charmed me, perplexed me, or informed me over the last ten years.

I spent a very enjoyable hour earlier this afternoon working through my librarything catalogue, adding the tag 'to_reread' to those books which fell into one of those categories, and came up with a list of 55 that I want to return to with the benefit of age. 55 is a lot of books, mind you, and I wouldn't be surprised if it takes me two or more years to work through all of them - keeping in mind, of course, that I will often be tempted by the new, by the unread, and will want to add to my tally and work towards my lifetime target (currently the rather random 2000).

Here they are, then: the books I'll be reading between now and when I turn 30, more or less, along with reasons for wanting to read them again.

Personal Favourites

One of the most wonderful friendships I currently enjoy began thanks to Somerset Maugham's "The Moon and Sixpence," and the conversations we had together after this introduction. Now I want to read again those books that had the greatest impression on me personally, and that I hold closest to my heart and my sensibilities. It's one thing to say, for instance, that "The Razor's Edge" is my favourite book - but it's quite a shameful thing to admit to having read it only once.

1984 (George Orwell)

Animal Farm (George Orwell)

The Beach (Alex Garland)

The Tesseract (Alex Garland)

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

Contact (Carl Sagan)

The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)

For Whom The Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway)

Generation X (Douglas Coupland)

London Fields (Martin Amis)

The New York Trilogy (Paul Auster)

The Notebook (Agota Kristof)

The Razor's Edge (Somerset Maugham)

Samarkand (Amin Maalouf)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera)

Potential Favourites

I read these too quickly; I didn't pay enough attention; I've since changed and would now enjoy these books more, or less; simply put, I haven't decided. These books I want to read again so that I can really decide if I loved them or simply liked them.

Boredom(Alberto Moravia)

A Confederate General from Big Sur(Richard Brautigan)

Crime and Punishment(Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

Ethan Frome(Edith Wharton)

I Am Legend(Richard Matheson)

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea(Yukio Mishima)

Tallien(Frederic Tuten)

Thank you Stamford Library

Back in the day, my local library used to have a carousel devoted to European fiction, and it was one of the greatest collections of exotic literature I have ever known. To a young man making his first tentative steps into the world of serious reading, it was like a fire in the night, luring him closer and closer. I have read a lot since, and I'd love to return to where it all started. Sadly, the days of the carousel have long since come to an end, and a lot of the books have been sold off. But I will find them again, and hopefully experience for a second time the magic of the unfamiliar and esoteric.

The Left-Handed Woman(Peter Handke)

In The Dutch Mountains(Cees Nooteboom)

Closely Observed Trains(Bohumil Hrabal)

The Hourglass(Danilo Kis)

The Outsider(Albert Camus)

Rebellion(Joseph Roth)

The Castle(Franz Kafka)

The Trial(Franz Kafka)

Polish Science Fiction

I discovered Stanislaw Lem on that carousel too, but I'm listing his books separately here. I fell deeply in love with his own special brand of humanised science fiction, but in the intervening years I have moved to distance myself from the genre. I can't say precisely why that is - it isn't fair to the s-f classics that are as good as mainstream literature to call them 'genre fiction.' I want to achieve two things by this particular revisit: firstly, I want to see if my love for Lem's writing still resides in my heart; second, I hope to use this opportunity to rebuild my enthusiasm for science fiction generally.

Fiasco

Memoirs of a Space Traveller

Microworlds

More Tales of Pirx the Pilot

Solaris

Back to the Beginning

I have a special place in my heart for those books I first turned to as a young adult, and then as my renaissance began, and these I would like to see once more, like old friends only half-remembered.

Around the World in 80 Days(Jules Verne)

Candide(Voltaire)

The Great Gatsby(F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Tender is the Night(F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Kim(Rudyard Kipling)

The Never-Ending Story(Michael Ende)

The Prince(Machiavelli)

A Tale of Two Cities(Charles Dickens)

Books that Educated more Literally

I've read a number of books now that really taught me something concrete, about the world, about science, or about myself. These books I need to read again, not simply because they deserve a second reading, but because I want to be able to quote from them more confidently. Don't worry though, I always give credit where credit is due, and you won't find me passing off Sven Lindqvist's ideas as my own.

The Selfish Gene(Richard Dawkins)

Lost Japan(Alex Kerr)

The Long Emergency(James Howard Kunstler)

A Little History of the World(Ernst Gombrich)

Exterminate All The Brutes(Sven Lindqvist)

A Brief History of Time(Stephen Hawking)

And Finally...

There are very few books in my collection that I read to the end and still disliked. If you look at my librarything catalogue closely, you'll see that most books have garnered three or more stars, and it is a rare thing for me to give a book a score of only one out of five - or less. But then the books that I've completed are the books that I've enjoyed enough to complete, unless I read that book as a favour to somebody: for instance, I've read more than enough Forsyth to know that I don't favour his style, but he was one of my father's favourite authors, so I thought it best to read more than just one of his novels. This last list contains those books that I have mixed, or incomplete, feelings about. Perhaps I thought they were wonderful, and now I'm not so sure; or I didn't understand them at all, and now want to go back see if there's something I missed during my initial read.

Fortunately, this is a short list, of mostly short books; if I decide having started any of them for the second time that I don't actually like them, it won't take me long to reach the last page.

The Bridges of Madison County(Robert James Waller)

The Catcher in the Rye(J.D. Salinger)

Heart of Darkness(Joseph Conrad)

Mao II(Don DeLillo)

Pedro Paramo(Juan Rulfo)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man(James Joyce)

On Reading 1001 Books

2007-09-10T19:55:00.000+01:00

I myself am a long way from this target, though it is a good one. I've been keeping a count for a while now and I'm only a handful of books away from the 300 mark - and that's forgetting all the old Star Trek and Star Wars books that filled my youth.

No, this is a reference to 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, a crazy compendium of literature that one perhaps should think twice about trying to compete with. I doubt I'll ever read all that has been suggested - and looking at some of the titles I doubt I'd want to. But here are the ones I've read so far, so I can get an idea of how much work would be left ahead of me:

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon

The Body Artist, Don DeLillo

Life of Pi, Yann Martel

The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje

American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis

Mao II, Don DeLillo

Regeneration, Pat Barker

London Fields, Martin Amis

Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey

The Afternoon of a Writer, Peter Handke

The Pigeon, Patrick Suskind

The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe

The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster

Contact, Carl Sagan

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

White Noise, Don DeLillo

The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

Money, A Suicide Note

The Cement Garden, Ian McEwan

The Shining, Stephen King

Dispatches, Michael Herr

The Left-Handed Woman, Peter Handke

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson

Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth

2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick

Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

The Graduate, Charles Webb

The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Collector, John Fowles

Solaris, Stanislaw Lem

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

Memento Mori, Muriel Spark

Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote

The Midwich Cuckoos, John Wyndham

On The Road, Jack Kerouac

The Quiet American, Graham Greene

Casino Royale, Ian Fleming

The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway

Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham

The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

1984, George Orwell

The Plague, Albert Camus

Animal Farm, George Orwell

The Razor's Edge, W. Somerset Maugham

The Outsider, Albert Camus

For Whom The Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck

To Have and Have Not, Ernest Hemingway

Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway

Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett

Amerika, Franz Kafka

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

The Castle, Franz Kafka

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Trial, Franz Kafka

We, Yevgeny Zamyatin

Siddhartha, Herman Hesse

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham

The 39 Steps, John Buchan

Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells

The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells

Dracula, Bram Stoker

The Time Machine, H.G. Wells

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

King Solomon's Mines, H. Rider Haggard

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas

Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper

Candide, Voltaire

Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift

Don Quixote, Cervantes

Which brings me to a grand total of 90 books so far; so roughly a third of the books I've read are actually on the list - a very neat coincidence. I'd concentrate on reading more to suit the list if my library wasn't more scattered - I've a lot to get through if I'm ever to read what I've bought.

On A Day Spent Reading

2007-08-21T16:41:00.000+01:00

It's been a good day so far, and it hasn't finished yet. I spent a couple of hours polishing off Mark Brandon Read's "Chopper," his autobiography; rubbish book (though I've read worse) though the film with Eric Bana's worth a look.

Having finished that, I went into town to browse the various booksellers, and then came home via the pub and a glass of raspberry beer. Ah, Frambozen. It's expensive and arguably a little gay but for a mid-afternoon beer there's nothing finer. Whilst I was at the pub, I started reading my next book (I know, I know, I haven't finished Sophie's World yet), this one by Janet Malcolm, called Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession. It's not bad so far, and with my previous post On Relationships in mind, I'd like to quote from the first chapter:

The phenomenon of transference - how we all invent each other according to early blueprints - was Freud's most original and radical discovery. The idea of infant sexuality and of the Oedipus complex can be accepted with a good deal more equanimity than the idea that the most precious and inviolate of entities - personal relations - is actually a messy jangle of misapprehensions, at best an uneasy truce between powerful solitary fantasy systems. Even (or especially) romantic love is fundamentally solitary, and has at its core a profound impersonality. The concept of transference at once destroys faith in personal relations and explains why they are tragic: we cannot know each other. We must grope around for each other through a dense thicket of absent others. We cannot see each other plain. A horrible kind of predestination hovers over each new attachment we form. "Only connect," E. M. Forster proposed. "Only we can't," the psychoanalyst knows. (Emphasis mine)

On Relationships

2007-08-16T16:34:00.000+01:00

A very good friend of mine, Ola, recently sent a book to me: Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. I'm working slowly through it; slowly, because it's really a brief history of philosophy more than a fictional story, and I've always had to read philosophy slowly to make sure I understood it. At the start of the story, a mysterious philosopher sends Sophie little envelopes with riddles written inside, like "Why is Lego the perfect toy?" and so forth. These questions prepare Sophie for what follows; in this example, the philosopher then introduces her (and us) to Democritus and the atomic theory.

Well, now I feel a lot like Sophie myself. At the end of a recent email, Ola wrote

"Do you believe in a once-in-a-lifetime love or do you rather think that a happy relationship is a matter of goodwill?"

Email has taken the place of the envelope, but the theory is the same, and I've been stuck on this question all day. I'm going to try and answer it now, but since I've been brought up to believe in the power and necessity of empirical evidence, I'm not simply going to give you my gut reaction.

On Love
I would love to believe in the power of love, and that for every single one of us, there is a matching partner in the world; all that we have to do is find this one special person, our soulmate, and then the rest of our lives will be spent in perpetual bliss. It is a reassuring story we tell ourselves, much like we tell children that there's an Easter Bunny and Father Christmas. As we grow older, we find that the chances of finding this special person have diminished greatly. But some people do genuinely seem very happy in their relationships. When both partners in a couple can honestly say that they love the other, then that is exactly what Ola's talking about. So how does it happen? Can it last, and can it overcome all difficulties?

One theory doing the rounds is the idea that love is an addiction. Two scientists at UCL scanned the brains of people in love, and found that the areas most active didn't correspond to the areas active during other emotions, such as anger and fear. In fact, the closest similarity is to a person doing drugs. In her book, Why We Love, Helen Fisher concludes that

"[R]omantic passion is... hardwired into our brains by millions of years of evolution. It is not an emotion; it is a drive as powerful as hunger."

Scientific research, then, would seem to suggest that this once-in-a-lifetime kind of love does exist, and exists for a reason. Fisher goes into more detail than I can here, obviously, and also talks about the different forms that 'love' can take. The original article linked to above is well worth reading; it is, I think, reprinted from The Economist magazine.

On the happy relationship
I'm sure that science can go a long way towards explaining why love is possible in the first place - how it happens, and why - but human beings are far too complex for a simple chemical analysis to determine what will happen for the rest of the relationship. For those of us who, in the first place, don't find that special someone, and perhaps decide to settle for a person we merely 'like', then how likely is the relationship to succeed?

My reading suggests that a good relationship, perhaps one based on goodwill as much as love, has as much of a chance to succeed as one based on romantic love, going on Dr Fisher's definition. My search for information led me to The Gottman Institute.

Dr John Gottman has been studying human relationships for longer than I have been alive, and he's now quite good at it. The website describes his means of operation:

"By examining partners’ heart rates, facial expressions, and how they talk about their relationship to each other and to other people, Dr. Gottman is able to predict with more than 90% accuracy which couples will make it, and which will not."

If a relationship can be studied, it makes sense to say that a relationship can be managed and made to work.

On the answer to Ola's question

I don't think I've answered Ola's question here at all. I've looked at some of the evidence that suggests that romantic love is primarily all about chemistry, and how all relationships need management to survive, whether they are based on love or not. But I think Ola is also asking another pair of questions that need to be answered before any of this other discussion can take place: is it possible to find and fall in love with someone who also falls in love with you? If not, is it possible to find someone you can imagine managing a relationship with, to the general benefit of both partners?

For the latter situation, I really can't say. I'm hoping that it is possible, because I don't want to spend the rest of my life alone. I am looking for someone to share my life with, but I have very few expectations about falling in love and having that love returned to me. I have fallen in love before (I think romantically, but I'll have to re-examine my feelings in light of today's reading), but only a handful of women have found me attractive, and part of falling in love is, chemically and from an evolutionary standpoint, concerned with attractiveness.

We'll have to see. I'm very glad that Ola has put this question to me. I've had to think very hard about my reaction, and I've had a reason to do some reading outside of my usual interests; plus, it's been a while since I wrote anything that was actually meant to make sense.

Further Reading
If you're interested, here's a review of Helen Fisher's book. For more about Dr Gottman in the context I originally discovered him, read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink

On Buying Cool Things

2007-08-16T08:47:00.000+01:00

I'm trying to find a book that I saw on a website somewhere. I was sure it was on neatorama but I've trawled through and not found it. Basically it's a book about sex, but it's not pervy (much) and it seemed interesting enough for it to be blogged about. It covers every facet of sex and the sex industry, but it's written in almost an encyclopedia-comic format. I don't think it's on taschen. In the meantime, I'm going to take a look around thinkgeek for some shopping inspiration.

On a return to the old school

2007-08-15T14:54:00.000+01:00

I haven't blogged in ages; not properly at least. So today, having grown tired of facebook, I've gone old school. I've returned.

Blogger has improved since I was last here; not a lot, mind you, but in some interesting areas. For instance, I like the idea of adding 'labels' to your posts, to better organise them. This is a lot better than simple archives of all blog posts according to date. It's not a new idea by any means - how many sites have tags, and even tag clouds to go with them? - but it's a step in the right direction. When one considers just how much one can do on facebook with the applications there, blogger seems mildly pedestrian in comparison - unless you know a little html and adopt more of a do-it-yourself attitude.

The worst thing about not blogging is that I always used to use my blog as a way of keeping track of interesting things online. I haven't been doing that much lately. I'm behind in my internet browsing too. I only discovered video sift the other day, and now love it; and I'm coming across great blogs all the time, like The Book Design Review right here on blogger. I'm sure if I had my own computer I'd do a lot more linking, and would probably do what I've done in the past, and buy webspace. But that hasn't been the case for a long time.

I've started writing again too. I need to find a place online to publish my work, and hopefully get some feedback. My good friend Ola has agreed to critique my latest effort, which is something I'm looking forward to reading. She tells me she's going to be merciless, which sounds both wonderful and frightening.

Finally, I've decided to go back to my scientific paper method of naming blog entries - I kind of like everything beginning with the word "on."

Days to go and then...

2007-08-15T14:17:00.001+01:00

Laura looking her sexiest.,
originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

There are only two more days left of the whole summer school, after today. So, two more lessons to plan and teach, and that's it.

I've decided to take an extended break from teaching, too. It's gotten so stressful, going into a classroom with the express purpose of increasing (or helping to increase) what my students know, and I've lost a lot of the enthusiasm I once had for doing all of this, so I think taking a break is the best possible option.

What next? Well, I've enrolled on a course with Estudio Hispanico to go and study Spanish for eight weeks: four in Seville and four in Granada. I'm very excited about the prospect of studying again, and I've been jealous of my foreign friends and how bilingual they are. At the end of the eight weeks I have no firm plans, but it'd be nice to go back to South America and travel some more.

Everyday feels like Sunday

2007-08-05T21:24:00.001+01:00

Myself and Sonia
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

The French group left today; the Spanish left yesterday; the Italians left on Friday. A lot of the teachers left yesterday too, and if it wasn't for facebook I'd have no way of keeping in touch. Except email. And sms.

Went to Nottingham yesterday, which was okay. Saw Sherwood Forest again, clowned around with the French lot, and then went into Nottingham itself for more clowning around. So much fun, so little time. Now I haven't anything to do except customise the hell out of facebook.

To look at later

2007-07-02T18:33:00.000+01:00

This might be interesting: Web 2.0 Award Winners. I'll take a look through these later when I have the time and actually feel like it.

Back from Rome

2007-01-23T10:47:00.001Z

Inside the Basilica, one can see ghosts everywhere
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

Well, I've returned. Actually, I got back a few days ago. Rome was excellent - a really rewarding trip that I'm glad to have taken. I feel fresh and recharged and almost ready to go back to work when the school holiday finishes.

The trip wasn't without incident, either; on the way out, there was some 'trouble' at the airport. We were delayed anyway because of some computer cock-up in the the terminal. Then, when we'd already sped down half of the runway, the pilot suddenly screeched on the brakes, bringing us to a crazy halt with little runway to go. Turns out, a dog was in our way. How provincial is this little airport for one of the most important cities in Poland?

10,000 Views!

2006-12-19T12:21:00.001Z

Krakow suburbs in the dark
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I've finally passed 10,000 views on my flickr photostream - a fact about which I am inordinately proud. Of course, I've seen some people with 10,000 views on a single photograph, but I'm pretty happy all the same.

I've also found a wonderful little website for keeping track of what you've read and who's read what: Library Thing. Notice the little widget to the left of the screen? This is one of the things you get with LT, and frankly I love it. I've taken so many ideas from the site as to what I should read next, all I have to do now is actually read something instead of spending all day on the internet.

And on Thursday, I'm coming home, back to Blighty. I'm excited, more than I thought I would be.

Don Quixote, Cervantes

2006-12-04T08:42:00.001Z

Drunk man salutes his dog
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

Finally, after two and a half months (more or less - I wasn't counting), I've come to the end of Don Quixote.

I'm really pleased I stuck it through. It wasn't a hard book by any means, but at 760 densely printed pages it was a major commitment, and I've not been willing or able to take on such a load many times in the past. Sure, I've read Moby Dick and Crime and Punishment but this is probably the longest book I've ever gotten through. Considering that the typeface was quite tiny, the dialogue compressed onto as few lines as possible, and the pages themselves physically large, 760 pages of this would seem like nearly twice the same in any other book.

The story itself is excellent. I got through the adventure of the windmills very early on - I think that because a lot of people are familiar with this tale, there aren't that many who have read the piece to its end. The windmill adventure only lasts a page or two, and is quite minor next to the whole. Still, it was good. I liked Sancho Panca a lot more than I thought I would, and Cervantes has a mind full of proverbs ready to use and abuse when it comes to his squire.

Also, I'd never known before that the book was really split in two - the second published years after the first; in the meantime, a false history of Don Quixote's adventures was published, and Cervantes takes a lot of time to rip this piece to shreds. It's one of the earliest inter-literal books I've found, wherein one author makes so direct a reference to another, and involves his characters in the discovery of this other book, rather than simply mentioning it in passing. The creation of Cid Hamet Benengeli also works a nice trick, leading the reader, as it were, to imagine Cervantes as no more than a middleman in relaying the history. One wonders if he was mindful of his own skin when he decided on this ploy, or if it was simply another example of his intertextualising.

In ur flickr account deleting ur photos

2006-11-30T09:57:00.001Z

Man in a suit sleeping on rocks
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I've finished purging my flickr photostream of the unworthies.

All I need to do now is go through the various sets I'd made and reorganise them - for instance, I've only a few photos left from Prague so there isn't much point in having a "Czech Republic" set. I'm really happy that I've spent the time going through my whole entire photostream - it brought back a lot of good memories of some great times and wonderful places - and more than that, it's made me realise that my skills as a photographer have improved immensely in the last four or so years. Let's hope the trend continues.

Oh, and the final tally? 925 photos remaining, so I've deleted nearly half of what was there. And the best thing? It's my weekend as of nine o'clock tonight, so I'll be able to spend the next three days burning a hole in my memory card ready to upload a whole bunch on Monday.

Signal Versus Noise

2006-11-29T10:21:00.001Z

St Mary's through the trees
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I was looking through my Flickr photostream recently, and I was amazed at the amount of crap I've uploaded. I actually kind of feel sorry for those poor souls out there who have attempted to navigate their way through the detritus of the digital age.

At the weekend, I had clear past 1700 photos online, which is fine if they're good or they mean something, but in most instances they don't. So I'm having a good clean through. I want to achieve two things - get rid of the bad and unnecessary, and make sure everything is titled. No more "jai001" and so forth.

I've also realised something very important - the act of taking photographs has been a lot more pleasurable over the last few years than actually looking at the results. I'm hoping that by the end of the week (or the start of the next) the pictures I have left online will be the cream of the crop and will go some way to capturing the joy I felt when I clicked the shutter release.

I'm down to 1471 photos so far - so that's nearly 300 erased, and thankfully so.

The sun sets on the tramline by the Nowa Huta steelworks

2006-11-23T11:05:00.001Z

The sun sets on the tramline by the Nowa Huta steelworks
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

This photo is quickly becoming one of my favourites, and also one of the most popular on my flickr photostream. It's the kind of photo that makes me think I should be more selective about what I upload and share - or in other words, that I should be more careful about my signal to noise ration. I'm quite tempted to spend a couple of hours at the weekend going through my older sets and deleting a lot of the photos that have never been looked at, or simply aren't that good. It's better to have two or three good photos, I should think, on their own, rather than in a group of twenty that you have to look through.

I'm trying to decide what to do this weekend. There's a good possibility that I might be going to the Wielicka saltmines with some of last months' celta students, which should be interesting. It's a UNESCO world heritage site, and therefore worthy of at least a couple of hours of my time. Might be expensive though - certainly more so than the trip to Nowa Huta which only set me back about 5 zloty's tram fare.

Three in Explore

2006-11-21T08:36:00.001Z

Waiting for the tram
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I'm very happy. This photo just made it onto Explore over at flickr. Very few of my photos have been so successful - the other two that make up the complement of my work there are from the India trip two years ago. Go me!

I'm also up to 87 different photos being "favourited" by the flickr community, which makes me very proud. The one of Oscar flying through the air is up to 10 favourites and is my most popular shot, even though a lot of people don't seem to really like the image itself. But then, it is a photo of Oscar, so what's not to love?

Tram number 15, Nowa Huta

2006-11-20T08:09:00.001Z

Tram number 15, Nowa Huta
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

This could well be my favourite shot of all those I've taken since coming to Krakow. I'm quite pleased with myself for having taken it, but at the same time a lot of credit goes to the immense amount of pollution around the steelmill where this photo was taken.

As I was walking back along the tramline I noticed my photographing exploits were not meeting with much admiration from truck drivers and other passers-by. In fact, on several occasions I'd just about steadied myself for a shot when there would be a loud horn blown practically in my face by a passing truck. I later learnt that the part of Krakow I was venturing around isn't frequented very often by tourists, and that the best word to describe the locale is "dodgy". Oh well, I at least got some good photographs out of it.

What picasa sees

2006-11-19T13:41:00.001Z

What picasa sees
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I can't believe I've picked up some sensor dirt again already. Well, actually, I can very well believe it, considering that I changed lenses out in the middle of nowhere (Nowa Huta) on the side of a most polluted road by the most polluting steelworks. Still, the photos were good so it was worth it.

I can't believe I spent so long happily breathing in this muck. I'm surprised I can breathe at all now. I should have worn one of those Chinese face masks. Thank you picasa, thank you so very much for showing me what was in that cloud of smoke that poured so incessantly from the steel mill smoke stack.

I saw Casino Royale the other day, and now I want to see it again. It was as excellent a film as I could possibly have hoped, and far more excellent than anything since Goldeneye. Parts of it were just brutal, and that's what I think Bond needed to become - brutal. Just like in the book Fleming wrote half a century or so ago.

Smoke rising, Nowa Huta steelworks

2006-11-17T18:03:00.001Z

Smoke rising, Nowa Huta steelworks
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I went back to Nowa Huta today. Scott and I first went there on the CELTA course a few months ago, but this time I let the tram go all the way to its terminus. I walked for about an hour and a half towards Nowa Huta proper then, passing the old and new steelworks.

The old works looked at first sight to be abandoned, the buildings all grey and brown and decayed, most of the windows smashed. But I was wrong. From several chimneys rose plumes of smoke, and it was obvious that this, one of Poland's largest steelworks, was working despite, or in spite of, appearances.

Closer to Nowa Huta itself, the works look newer and shinier, but less interesting. The decayed relics of industry impressed me, though not my lungs, and definitely not my camera. On one or two shots I've noticed that there is some sensor dirt that needs dealing with; I had this problem in Peru and thought I'd dealt with it.

Enjoying Krakow

2006-11-17T11:15:00.001Z

Young Cracovians in love
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I'm beginning to feel settled in Krakow now. The weeks pass with ease, as they should, being only four days in length. Today's the first day of my weekly three-day weekend, which is reason enough to celebrate. I'm sorting out tax issues, and then later I'll head over to Nowa Huta to see what that's all about.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try to get out of Krakow. Much as I like it here, I've not left in the past three months, save for a brief foray out to Oswiecim (Auschwitz to you or I), and I feel like I did coming home from Japan having explored no more than Nagano, Nagoya and Tokyo.

Organising Flickr

2006-07-27T09:43:00.000+01:00

Sammy ponders life in Miami
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I've really grown into Flickr in a big way. So much so in fact that I've deleted all of my South America pictures from my photostream, in order to go back over all of them and edit and crop them so that they're just right. Then I'll be able to share just my best photographs rather than a million competent ones, which will be much better.
I'm also getting ready to move again - this time to Poland for a month to do the CELTA. Turns out I've been mispronouncing the name of the course, saying it with a hard "c" rather than the "c" in "celeron." Oh well.

Best trip ever!

2006-07-09T09:33:00.000+01:00

The gang, overlooking Lake Titicaca
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I'm back - I have been for a while - and I have to say, here indeed is a contender for the best trip I have ever been on.

It really was so much better than I had anticipated. The stop-over in Miami was long enough to go and explore South Beach; La Paz was extraordinarily beautiful when viewed from El Alto; the ruins were fine and not too many that I suffered from ruin-fatigue; the hiking was marvellous and strangely refreshing; the food was delightful, and I had some of the best seafood ever in Lima; Cusco was picturesque and belonged to the locals far more than I had thought; and Machu Picchu... well, what can one say? It lives up to the hype and then some, and the climb up Wayna Picchu was simply outstanding.

So the question really is, where to next?

Packing

2006-06-01T20:17:00.000+01:00

rises
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I've now started packing for the trip. I want to take as much camera equipment as I can manage, but since I know I'll have to carry it I also don't want to take anything more than two lenses and a tripod. I need the latter because I might be able to get to Machu Pichu early in the morning to do a long exposure, and also it is cheap and light and doesn't count for much. However, the question is which lenses to take? I should really take the standard lens because it has the widest field of view - again very useful for Machu Pichu. I should also take one of my telephoto lenses, probably the physically smaller Nikon one, because then I can do proper people shots with the blurred background. The real question then is this: do I take the macro lens and try and find space for it in my luggage? This is a very hard subject to settle, because my camera bag only has room for two lenses, not three, and I don't want to risk getting any of my lenses damaged. What to do, what to do...

Just over a week...

2006-05-31T20:36:00.000+01:00

insidered
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

In a little more than a week I'll be jetting off again, this time to South America. I'm travelling with Explore to see if they're any good, and I'll be visiting Bolivia and Peru. I got worried a few months back that the Peruvian government was going to make it harder for people to get to Machu Picchu so I thought I'd best get my boots on and skip town quickly before my chance was gone. No worries really, though.
This will be the first time that I'll have travelled south of the equator, though I'll be taking my time getting there - including a silly stop-over in Miami, it's a twenty-three hour trip.

Photos, Photos

2006-05-30T20:01:00.000+01:00

spiderlike2
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

My new macro lens finally arrived today. I took it out with me after work and in the space of 16 minutes (I checked the date stamps on the files) I managed to take 114 photographs. Now obviously you haven't got time to look at 114 photographs but I have gone to the trouble of uploading some of them so if you don't mind...

And in case you're wondering, the lens is a Sigma 50mm macro, and it is beautiful. I should take a photo of it sometime, it's that great. It has this little gold band at the top by the lens cap, and it feels weighty and substantial like it means something. It is easily the best lens I've got, even though it cost as much as a good compact camera (ouch). I love macro photography, so it'll get enough use to justify its pricetag - by the end of the week I should think.

Getting Flickr'd

2006-05-16T21:04:00.000+01:00

A monumental view of Helsinki's cathedral
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I'm slowly getting up-to-date with my travels on Flickr. With any luck I'll have all my photos uploaded by the time I head off down to South America.
I'm loving my new Nikon D50 like you wouldn't believe (unless you're from Dixons in which case you'll probably be sick of hearing about it). I took 170 photos today alone, all of them of Hector and Oscar in the paddling pool. Maybe one or two of those will be worth showing, and given time they'll be on flickr too, but the priority still lies with the pictures. Check them out.

Bratislava

2006-04-23T15:01:00.000+01:00

Bratislava Castle
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I'm back from my latest travels, and now the list properly stretches to 23. As a kind of spur-of-the-moment act, I popped over to Bratislava in Slovakia for a day and a night, and have thus added that country to my list.

I've finally sorted out my paypal account, and with that done I've proceeded with upgrading my flickr subscription to the pro level, giving me 2Gb of bandwidth to use each month. I have a feeling it's going to be a busy few weeks ahead, uploading all my old sets and then putting little descriptions in with everything. I've spent most of today doing it and I'm about 4% done...

Budapest Parliament

2006-04-11T19:29:00.000+01:00

Budapest Parlament
Originally uploaded by Citroën Guy.

It has been a long, long time since I last posted anything here, which is a real shame. My poor, long suffering audience - I can understand why you've chosen not to comment spam me in the intervening months.

This picture shows where I'm going next - Budapest, the Hungarian capital. This time next week, and I'll be there. I've also booked a further trip abroad for June - Peru and Bolivia courtesy of Explore.

I'm 27 full years old in the summer - by the time I get back from Lima no less - so how am I doing with the ol' fifty in fifty plan? Here's how (looking ahead to the completion of the trips I've paid for but haven't quite completed yet - in bold):

Austria

Belgium

Bolivia

Canada

Czech Republic

Denmark

Estonia

Finland

France

Germany

Hungary

India

Italy

Japan

Latvia

Lithuania

Portugal

Peru

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Ukraine

United Arab Emirates, The

United States of America, The

EUR05: This is the end, oh beautiful friend, the end.

2005-08-28T14:14:00.000+01:00

Hamburger Rathaus
Originally uploaded by Christoph Hoerl.

Shit. Saigon. Wait, no, that's a different movie. Well, you get the idea. My original plan to travel down to Turkey from Scandinavia has been scrapped, and for these very good reasons:

Money: I've spent too much and would rather spend no more.
Weather: parts of Europe flooded, you say? The parts I want to see?
Fatigue: in India it was fortress fatigue; the first time around Europe it was museum fatigue. This time, I just feel tired. This could well be the last time I attempt anything as big as this solo - Soylent Green needs people!

Which brings me to the end, Hamburg, Germany, out of which I fly on Tuesday. I'll write a follow-up sometime, get some pictures onto flickr once they're edited, and get on with my life. It has been fun though.

EUR05: Country 7, Denmark

2005-08-26T07:51:00.000+01:00

Nyhavn
Originally uploaded by tomhe.

Okay, so I've decided to change my plans. I'm no longer heading towards Turkey, for the simple reason that I've reached my tolerance for new things. Instead, I've taken a flight from Vilnius to Copenhagen, where I am right now, and in the afternoon I'll be getting on a sumptuously upholstered train to Hamburg in Germany.

Yes, I've been to Germany already so it won't be as new as, say, Poland. But I think it's the right thing to do, so that I can one day come back and do justice to the countries I've missed out on this time.

EUR05: Country Four, Sweden

2005-08-18T12:52:00.000+01:00

bridge to skeppsholmen, stockholm
Originally uploaded by craiggthomson.

The ferry trip was pretty fine, with not much to do but read. I managed to get through the whole of "The Three Musketeers" in three days between leaving Tallinn and leaving Helsinki. Now I'm reading "On The Road" which is a lot better than I thought it would be.

Stockholm is a beautiful city, make no mistake. I have spent the last four hours wandering its streets and every which way I turn I stumble across another something beautiful worth photographing. That being said, I still think deep down that Kiev has spoilt me quite majorly - everything elsewhere seems so tourist-laden and expensive and all I want to do is find someone selling cheap beer where I can sit and read for an hour and not feel like there are people queueing to take my seat.

EUR05: Country Three, Finland

2005-08-16T10:45:00.000+01:00

Eteläesplanadi
Originally uploaded by amsterboy.

I got into Helsinki later yesterday than I had expected - my Linda Line ferry didn't run because, I'm told, it was too windy. Instead I travelled with Nordic Jet, who were more expensive and left an hour later, but I'm not sour because it was a smooth ride and I read the whole way over.

So, Helsinki. It's still busy even though the athletics has finished, and it is expensive, though not as expensive as I had feared. Also, everything is in walking distance so I figure that I save enough not using public transport to justify spending a little extra on food.

Tomorrow, I'm taking another ferry, overnight to Stockholm. It takes sixteen hours but I have a cabin; this will be an entirely new experience for me, having never slept on a ship before.

EUR05: Country Two, Estonia

2005-08-12T15:19:00.000+01:00

Tallin Old Town Walls
Originally uploaded by expectdelays.

Well, what a day it's been. I woke up at five this morning and made my way to the airport in Ukraine, flew from there to Helsinki, got a bus into town, traipsed down to the harbour, got onto a ferry, and an hour and a half of bouncing around later I was in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia and the second country on my list for EUR05 (Finland you will understand doesn't count until I return on Monday).

Tallinn is all rather beautiful, and reminds me of Bruges in Belgium. I went to Bruges so that I could drink "Dr Evil style" but everything was so expensive there. In comparison, Tallinn practically gives its drink away. Which is nice.

What's not so nice is the rain. The storm affecting most of Eastern Europe is affecting here as well, and the sky is a patchy mess of blue and grey, and I fear that any photos I take now will be touched by the greyness and won't come out too well. So I'll explore this afternoon, and get my snaps done tomorrow. If it isn't as bad.

I'm really beginning to get excited about this trip now. Because of the constrictions I faced in Ukraine - advanced hotel reservations, the flights - it felt as though it was a completely separate entity from what I am now experiencing. I still need to make some arrangements in advance - all that's left is to book a ferry from x to y sometime for the week after next, and that'll be that. I'll tell you what x and y are when they're done. In case I change my mind.

EUR05: Lviv

2005-08-09T12:23:00.000+01:00

Hotel George
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

Four days in Lviv: for two of them it rained constantly, one suffered from a miserably overcast sky, and today has been a little more sunny but very windy.

Lviv though is very picturesque. It possesses buildings with the same silver/aluminium roofs made famous by Montmatre in Paris, and all in all it feels like a Russian-ish version of Brussels. I don't think the locals would appreciate the connection I'm implying with Russia; from what I've read they're quite a nationalist bunch, allegedly more so than in Kyiv. I haven't seen it myself though.

I have no idea who the guy is reflected in the photo I've used, but whoever he is he must have stayed in the Hotel George, just like myself. It's a beautiful pink wedding cake kind of building, a century old and with fixtures that certainly agree. I'm beginning to wonder if there's something quietly sinister about the Lvivians; wherever I go nobody has the lights on. Even here in this internet cafe slash bar, the lights are off and from the outside it looks very much closed. I would have walked right past it if I wasn't busy killing time before tonight's return trip to Kyiv.

India prepared me well for this bout of travelling. Especially for the long periods of nothingness I occasionally foist upon myself. I checked out of my hotel in Kyiv a bit before midday last Friday, even though my train didn't leave until gone eleven at night. I got a lot of reading done. Also, the train's interior, in the lower class sleeper compartment I found myself in, was incredibly similar to the one Mr Willis and I travelled from Agra to Varanasi and to Delhi in - the same plastic/leather bunks arranged in sets of two-by-two-by-two, only here I didn't have to share my bed with any creepy crawlies (at least, if I did, they were small enough for me not to notice).

Today's train runs from half seven, so I should be back in Kyiv early in the morning. I'm on the left bank, as it is called, across the Dnipro from where all the cultural attractions are, and probably far from a metro station. I'm not worried about that, though. I'm flying out on Friday, early so I need to set my alarm, and before you know it I'll be in Estonia. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but I've been looking at alternative travel plans around the Baltic Sea and I've decided to take a slight detour - I'll tell all when it's finally decided and I've made hostel arrangements et ceter arse.

A little about the River Dnipro. I like it, but every time I see its name I think of that Beck song, "E-Pro." I wonder if there's any connection.

EUR05: Kyiv (2)

2005-08-03T15:48:00.000+01:00

st fluffys
Originally uploaded by mwc134.

Kyiv is really something special. I was thinking about all the different cities I've visited so far as I was climbing up the hill behind my hotel, and then I found myself looking first at St Michael's in one direction and then St Sophia's in the other. These two pieces are two of the most sumptuous I have ever seen.

And that was before I found St Andrew's (pictured), whose domes look like embroidered velvet.

I've had to make the first change to my plans today. I tried to understand how the rail network here works, and having failed I scarpered to the nearest tourist office. The earliest I can make it to Lviv will be Friday night (arriving Saturday) which means I lose a night there. However, the hotel is pretty cheap so I could stay an extra night; I'm not terribly disappointed whichever way things work out, because if I'm to spend a day longer in Kyiv there are a million street stalls calling my name with their sub-50p pints of beer. Ah, Kyiv.

EUR05: Kyiv, Ukraine

2005-08-02T18:07:00.000+01:00

Indipendence Day
Originally uploaded by Kreša.

So, here I am in Ukraine, thanks mostly to the relaxed visa restrictions for EU nationals. I didn't know what to expect, and now that I'm here I still don't know. Kyiv is such a strange melange of different things that it's hard to summarise. If I had to try, I'd say that Kyiv is great and leave it at that.

How so? Well, to begin with, the architecture. I don't know how best to describe the sheer beauty of so many of the buildings here - I'm no architect or art critic - but there is a huge variety, from the iconic communist monstrosities to the centuries old golden monasteries of Pechersk Lavra. Buildings are wonderfully painted in pink, blue, green, yellow, though never all at once. On one occasion I was swept back to the beautiful pink excesses of Jaipur, India.

Speaking of excesses, two things come to mind. Firstly, having found a taxi and some people to share it with at the airport, we entered town to the rousing reception of a level-10 storm. Lightning flashed more often than I could blink and within minutes the streets were flooded. The other excess was just as powerful to behold - the Second World War memorial overlooking the River Dnipro. This is the subject of the picture you can see on the right - a 102m tall metal woman, nicknamed "Tin Tits." On the shield, the hammer and sickle of the Soviets.

One area in which I most definitely struggle concerns language, as I had predicted. I neglected to bring with me a phrase book, and the only two people I have met so far to speak even the most basic English have worked for fast-food joints in one of the many cavernous underground shopping centres. I managed to teach myself quite a few Cyrillic letters on the way over, by comparing names in English and Ukrainian in a bilingual in-flight magazine. It's been a lot of fun, actually; I always enjoy myself most when I feel that I'm learning. It would help though if I learnt a little bit faster.

So, I have a couple more days until I head West to Lviv, which I'm told is the polyglot sister to Russian Kyiv. Should be good, but I like it here too and my only worry is that the cities that appear later on my itinerary compare poorly with this exciting capital.

PS. On an unrelated note, it would appear that I am finally to become a published writer, of sorts. The New Statesman has accepted a letter of mine to publish - not exactly a first novel deal but a great start, and something to treasure.

On The List

2005-07-19T13:00:00.000+01:00

dub017
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I had an interesting conversation last night with my brother Richard, who has just returned from a geology field trip.

I told him about my planned tour of Europe (EUR05 I've named it), and we began to talk about the number of countries we'd visited.

My list currently stands at 14, though there are a couple of countries I could add to that if I so desired: I have been to Holland but was too young to remember; I have been to Greece, but Corfu is so unlike Greece (or so I hope) that I refuse to count it, and also I was too young to have much choice about the matter of going; one summer we spent six weeks exploring the West Coast of America, and hopped across the border to Mexico where we had a look around Nogales.

Holland and Greece I certainly will not include in my list. I'm only including the places I visited when I was old enough to appreciate them. But Mexico? I decided a while back to only include places where I had spent at least one night, so having only seen a few hours' worth of Mexico it doesn't get onto the list.

But really, where does that leave me? What if I want to add Vatican City or Monaco to my list? Will I be able to?

A partial rethink might be required - one that makes excuses for the smaller countries I might see in the future.

But unlike Richard, I'm not going to count places where I sat for five minutes in a traffic jam, even if Lichtenstein affords huge bragging rights.

Oh, and that list in full, as it stands today:

Austria

Belgium

Canada

Czech Republic

France

Germany

India

Italy

Japan

Portugal

Spain

Switzerland

United Arab Emirates, The

United States of America, The

On The Road Again

2005-07-18T11:25:00.000+01:00

Soviet Gates
Originally uploaded by Little Lushie.

It has been a while since the last posting. I left my job, I went pretty much cold-turkey regarding the internet (one hour per day, courtesy of Guildford library), and now I'm ready to move out.

But I have a plan.

Okay, so on the first of August I fly out to Kiev, Ukraine, where I'll be spending about ten days at the start of EUR05, my latest excursion around Europe. I've secured a place to stay for the duration - four hotels in all, three in Kiev and one in Lviv.

I'll be blogging as much as possible but whilst I'm gone I'll be reliant on other people's photographs, blogged from flickr and replaced by my own, with any luck, at a later date. Or not.

As regards Ukraine (I'm told the "The" is superfluous), I'm so glad they hosted the Eurovision song contest recently! No, really, I am, because as a result the good folk over in the newly elected government decided to drop visa regulations for EU member states until the start of September. I hate dealing with excessively restrictive visas. I can understand why one was necessary for India - they love their bureaucracy and it keeps people employed - and I understand that many countries need you to get a visa on arrival. What I dislike is having to have everything so perfectly arranged before departure - on a trip like this, I want my flexibility. That's why I'm not going to Belarus, because I don't know enough about getting into and around the country and where it would fit into my plans, which is a shame because I've heard good things about Minsk.

So, about ten days in Ukraine, at the end of which I fly on to Helsinki. But I'm not staying there, oh no, because I can't. Unless I want to spend £100 per night on a single room, which I don't, I can't stay there immediately because there's some big Commonwealth athletics meet or something. Instead, I'll hop off the plane and onto a ferry and spend a couple of days in Tallinn, Estonia, and then return to Helsinki when the fuss is over.

And why am I so keen on staying in Helsinki? Couldn't I day-trip and stay in Tallinn? Why yes, certainly I could, but I have decided that "the list" can only include places where I have stayed overnight as an adult.

What is this list? It is the list everyone keeps, or everyone that travels keeps, detailing the countries one has visited. For me the number has just reached I think 14 - not too bad, but I'm well behind on my ambition to see 50 countries by the time I'm 50. However, this trip should get my up to speed rather neatly: I plan on visiting about a dozen countries in the next few months, which will get me up to maybe 26 or 27, and having recently turned 26 myself that would be rather smart.

On Udaipur vs Octopussy

2005-05-09T12:21:00.000+01:00

udai047
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I got a real thrill a couple of nights ago, when ITV showed "Octopussy" as part of its backwards-oriented James Bond series (backwards because they started with "Die Another Day" and will no doubt conclude with "Dr No" - backwards also because they interrupted the broadcast, as always, for an hour-long news break. What, is it still 1990?).

The thrill I got was because Bond was sent to Delhi, India, which quickly revealed itself to be Udaipur. Perhaps Delhi was too dingy to have been of any interest for our good spy? Anyway, no sooner had M told Bond to pack his bags for Delhi than we were shown a helicopter languidly floating past the Taj Mahal, Agra, and leading our hero eventually to Udaipur, home of the floating palace over Lake Pichola, and of course everyone's favourite, The Monsoon Palace, pictured here.

Perhaps it was a result of Bond's actions in the palace, when he was taken prisoner there, but the buildings I saw whilst in India, though certainly charming, were nothing like as beautifully presented as they were in the film.

It was almost as if they had used the palace only for its melancholic name.

On Darwinism and Wondir

2005-05-01T18:14:00.000+01:00

If a change to an organism is to be successful, it must serve some purpose and it must allow the organism to survive in preference to its natural competition. Wondir has evolved, bit by bit, since long before I took any notice of it, but for it to survive without becoming no more than a niche animal - too specialised, like the sabre-tooth, to survive once its prey has gone - the next couple of evolutionary steps will prove to be most important.

I've written about the problems I see with the Wondir model, and I've written about the joys of being a Wondir contributor. Now that I've had time to reflect on what I've seen and thought, I can predict.

Wondir's main rival in the cannibalistic interactive knowledge market seems to be Google Answers, but I would proffer Wikipedia as just as big a threat. Many of the answers to questions I've seen on Wondir have linked to the wiki, or quoted from it or at least plagiarised from it; the best ones have been informed by wikipedia. This is certainly true of many of my own answers. To do justice to the question asker, I often read up on a given subject at wikipedia. I use it to confirm what I knew, to check facts and get the names of important theories, and often I use it as inspiration.

But what does this mean for Wondir? Is it competition? Returning to my initial speculation, suggesting the niche nature of the board, then yes. There is a great danger that those question askers arriving at Wondir because it offers something that Google Answers charges for will leave disappointed, because Wondir is not the same animal. Is Wondir a suitable place to ask in-depth questions? Is it reasonable to post a question that would require an investment of time of the answerer, or in these cases would it be better for that person to head over to wikipedia and leave the board to those who use it in its true spirit?

What then do I think is the true spirit of the Wondir board? Simply put, its existence is based upon its reactiveness, its spontaneity. Wondir contributors pride themselves on replying to a question as quickly as possible (ironically, the Hawaiian translation of 'wiki wiki'), often getting in an answer within minutes. What happens to a question that cannot be answered so quickly? It moves down the board, lost and forgotten as other questions arrive that demand attention. A question that moves past page 5, say, of the board is as good as lost. I've looked for myself - there are some damned fine questions in the deeper reaches of the system that I would like to answer but is there any point? Will anyone read it? Is the question asker still listening, or has he or she looked elsewhere at this point?

Arguably (and I'm hoping to generate an argument - or at least a debate), Wondir is a reflection of modernity, a mirror into which we gaze. Its short-comings highlight our own, and its illumination to outside observers on the zeitgeist is more valuable than the throw-away questions one sees asked time and again. The bad grammar, the incomprehensible questions, the requests for information that could have been found with a copy and a paste into Google's search engine, the replacement of depth and consideration by speed and efficiency - all this could be describing the world in general, and not just a question and answer board.

Praise be to those whose hard work rewards the unworthy. At the time of writing, a dog breeder by the username of jevette has contributed more than 11,300 answers to the community, and it would be irresponsible and inaccurate to say her efforts have all been in vain. I have now answered over 100, and some have proved memorable, directing my thoughts away from where they usually reside. But what has become of my time? Have I provoked a discussion with my words? Have my answers been challenged? Has anyone else noticed the questions I've taken so long to answer, now that they're as far away in Internet terms as the Moon is from London? Has anyone else had their thoughts moved elsewhere, in new and exciting directions?

I hope so. For, if Wondir is the zeitgeist posing as an online answers board, it would be depressing if the answer to this question was no.

On The Frailty of Wondir

2005-04-26T11:48:00.000+01:00

The biggest strength of a community is also its biggest weakness - its contributors. There have been some excellent questions on Wondir recently - a particularly thought-provoking one on the subject of language marginalisation had me sitting in silence for minutes contemplating my answer (which surely made it a huge benefit for those around me) - but now it seems to have been discovered by high-school students, and has finally begun to suffer from the deadweight of question spamming.

Take for instance the sudden proliferation of questions about radiation and atomic chemistry; the questions are even numbered and are all multiple choice. It is obvious that this is just someone's homework, and it is fairly depressing that I have to battle my way through so many to get to the juicier questions.

The staff at Wondir are now faced with a difficult decision: to moderate or not? Moderation of the boards would be useful for people such as myself - keen to help but put-off by spam and horrendous grammar - and for teachers who might want to use the board as an educational aid. Moderation, though, could be the death of the board; it would remove the spontaneity that is the life blood of the community. If you make someone jump through hoops in order to ask a question, will that person bother at all?

On India04: Varanasi

2005-04-26T11:23:00.000+01:00

Varanasi
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

Varanasi; formerly Benares and still called that by some of the locals. Aside from an enlightening boat ride down the septic Ganges, and a brief tour of some of the cultural highlights of the city, Richard and I did nothing with our time here: we were too exhausted.

The Ganges was really quite something, lined with ghats - stairways down from the street to the water's edge - and crowded with people even as we headed there at sunrise. The Ganges is a holy river, and dramatically important in the Hindu religion; so much so that it is a place of pilgrimmage much like Sarnath is for Buddhists. It is so sad to know that the river is dead. It is so polluted that nothing can live in it anymore, yet still people come down to the river to wash themselves and their clothes and their pots and pans. It horrified me to imagine what I might be eating out of at our next meal.

The Ganges is also where people come to die, and to be cremated. In our boat, Richard, myself and a Japanese salaryman on a week's vacation, we sat in awe as we watched a blazing funeral pyre, the fire burning bright red and orange against the blue tones of the pre-sunrise dawn. "No photographs," our guide whispered, waving his hand as I raised my camera. I nodded and looked on in awed silence, as a burning mound was pushed into the river and I realised that it wasn't simply a mound, it was a person who used to be.

Time passed slowly for us in our hotel in Varanasi, on the long train ride to Delhi, and for the last couple of days we spent there before returning home via Dubai, yet at no stage were we bored. We played games, word games and geography quizes: how many countries can you name for each letter? The letter "R" is a tricky one - you can spend ages trying to think of countries, as it's such an important letter, but there are only three: Rwanda, Romania and Russia.

With just three days to go before England, I finally made the effort to call home. Previously I had relied on email, and even then I had sent only a few: there were better things to do than sit in an intensely stuffy little room typing and dehydrating. The call home made the wait to return infinitely more difficult, as I was informed of my father's death. I wished that I could have been with the rest of my family, to help, and felt as though I had abandoned them, even though I immediately knew that wasn't true.

I passed the last two days in Delhi, and one in Dubai, in something of a haze, as though I had died become a ghost left to wander the world, unable to touch or taste or feel. I was not sad to leave India, nor was I happy to return to England; I had simultaneously nothing and everything to return to.

On Giving an Answer

2005-04-25T13:00:00.000+01:00

Why do I answer questions posed on Wondir? What's the point? What's in it for me?

I've thought about this a lot recently - I've had the time to do so, and this is what happens when all you have is time. I answer questions posed on Wondir because: it is something to do - a hobby of sorts; it is a chance for me to participate in something that other people are involved with; it gives me the opportunity to demonstrate my learning; it highlights the gaps in my knowledge and gives me the motivation to fill them; it makes me better at succinctly answering sometimes difficult or open-ended questions; it gives me pause for thought as I frame what I want to say, and make sure that I'm saying the right thing, rather than just jumping straight in, as I am sometimes wont to do.

That's why I do it: so that I learn through answering just as others learn through questioning; I learn about myself.

On India04: Sarnath

2005-04-25T11:31:00.000+01:00

sarnath
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

At Agra, we left Bhupinder, who had been our constant companion since day two of our India experience. We parted with a handshake and a smile, and I hope that the tip Richard and I left for him, in an envelope with his client testimonials book in the glove compartment of his beaten-up car, was sufficient. I'm not good at tipping, but with Richard there to help I'm sure Bhupinder did okay by us.

Bhupinder left us at the train station a couple of miles out of Agra, where we waited for hours for a train to take us to Varanasi, half a day's journey away. Railway stations are a perplexing place in India. The platforms are not clearly signposted, and when the trains arrive, neither are they. The woman in the passenger's lounge demands baksheesh to enter your name in the station's logbook, and the porter, who for us was a scrawny little man who nonetheless carried all our bags without a struggle, demanded twice what we'd agreed beforehand because the train was so late. With a harsh word and an even harsher expression, I sent him packing with a small, though hardly paltry, tip. Should I feel bad about my attitude? As I have said, I am a very lucky guy. I earn enough in a week to cover the costs of someone living out here for many months, and yet when I feel that I am being taken advantage of I react accordingly. Bhupinder worked hard for Richard and I, though he was paid commission by all of the businesses he took us to; still, we gave him a good tip because, on balance, he was worth it. I don't mind giving money to deserving souls, but I will not give money to those that demand it of me.

My aggressive demeanour carried us into Varanasi, where we soon discovered that our tour operator in Delhi had done us a disservice. We had expected the same freedom of movement as we had enjoyed in Rajasthan, but here we were expected to pay extra for everything, even the trip we'd planned out to Sarnath. I was angry - how were we to know that the arrangements were so different? - and I pressed home my point time and again until our Varanasi representative crumbled (partly) and gave us what we wanted (partly). And so it was that we saw Sarnath, one of the holiest of holy sites in the Buddhist religion - I believe it was where the Buddha gave his first teachings. Richard was enthralled; I was emotionally drained by what had gone before and so perhaps wasn't as appreciative. All I could think of was how immensely phallic the Buddhist stupahs seemed.

On India04: Agra

2005-04-25T10:56:00.000+01:00

Taj Mahal 001
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I consider myself to be an extremely lucky guy. Why? Because I'm so damned attractive I have to hire someone to escort me everywhere and keep the girls at bay? Because I'm so gifted at everything I do I have to advertise that I don't want a job? No. Because I've seen the Taj Mahal at its most glorious, and without a horde of other eager tourists getting in the way of my shot.

I have two photographs of the Taj, the world's greatest legacy to love; my favourite is probably this one here, but for its combination of impact and familiarity I have chosen the one above to post. As for Agra, there's very little I want to say; if you plan on visiting it, certainly go to the Taj and perhaps also the mini Taj (if they've gotten rid of the scaffolding) for comparison, and the fort is great if you're not already suffering from fort-fatigue, but otherwise get out of Agra as soon as you can. It's awful.

On India04: Jaipur Part Two

2005-04-25T10:29:00.000+01:00

jaipur003
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

By the time Richard and I returned to Jaipur, we felt like we were different people, exploring a different country to the one we had so recently arrived in. Yet nothing had really changed; there was still the same sense of decay and nondescript danger as there had been in Delhi, and we still suffered from the same anxieties. In the evening, after dining alone in the hotel's restaurant, we looked through Richard's Lonely Planet guide, contemplating our future. "It says here," I said, "that it isn't recommended that you head into Bihar without an armed escort. Richard, we were planning on going to Bodhgaya by train, and that's in Bihar!" The statements we read about where we'd been and where we were going, or would have gone had our plans not changed, were so extreme that by the second paragraph we were laughing so hard as to almost cry.

Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan, is popularly known as the "Pink City," for the decorative use of pink stucco in its architecture. It was founded by the warrior-scholar Jai Singh II, who was admired equally for his leadership on the battlefield as for his learned background. The picture above is from Jantar Mantar, the Maharaja's observatory. Jai Singh II sent his scholars around the world to investigate astronomy and bring back new techniques and ideas; after years of experimentation with brass instruments and glass optics, Jai decided that his environment was not hospitable to European methods, and he set about constructing a stone and marble observatory. The results are spectacular, and for both Richard and I, one of the true highlights of our tour, since neither of us had seen anything like it anywhere before.

On Darkness At Night

2005-04-22T14:21:00.000+01:00

Fire in the Sky
Originally uploaded by Greco.

Why is it dark at night? This question was posed over at Wondir in the middle of last year, and more recently by myself here. Unfortunately, as you can see, I didn't get the answer I was looking for.

So why does it get dark at night? Is it as simple as the Sun being on the other side of the Earth? No. The real question is: how old is the universe? Is it infinitely old, as some assume? Since the sky is dark at night, it can't be.

The sky is dark at night because the universe has a finite age. It has a finite age because there are a finite number of stars, and the light from these stars is only just reaching us. If the universe was infinite and infinitely old, there would be an infinite number of stars in the sky, and there would have been an infinite amount of time for the light from all of them to reach us; the sky would never go dark. There would always be enough light.

Embarrassingly, this was the first question I've asked of the wondir community, and I forgot to correctly set its category - it now resides in the Beauty and Fashion section, so perhaps I should not have been surprised by the answers I got. It was great to see such a rapid response though - four replies in as many minutes.

On India04: Jodhpur

2005-04-22T12:50:00.000+01:00

Jodhpur001
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

In the time before the British, and certainly before Gandhi, India was a country dominated by a caste system: everyone had an assigned place and role in society. The most religious caste were the brahmin. As a form of identification, they painted the walls of their house a wonderfully deep blue colour; one benefit the paint offered was as a natural mosquito repellent, and soon many houses were lavishly painted blue, on one wall if not more.

One city that gained a certain level of recognition for this (as well as for the riding boots that bear its name) is Jodhpur, the blue city. Having left Udaipur, Richard and I travelled back north, where we stayed at a kind of boutique hotel, called Newton's Manor. Mr Newton himself put in an appearance often, but it wasn't until well into our first awkward conversation that I discovered his identity. Mr Newton, a christened Indian running a Christian hotel, was a quiet man who expressed himself most powerfully by saying little; unfortunately, what little he said to me left me with the impression that he had little to say. The hotel contained many personal touches that a less-exhausted traveller would have revelled in; the familiarity of the staff, the way the bedroom doors didn't close, the way the bathroom doors had clear plastic running down their length and offered no privacy, but Richard and I were too tired to care and besides, it was August, pretty much the hottest month of the year in Rajasthan.

Richard had begun to suffer from the heat. We drank obsessively - bottled water, always with the cap intact when we bought it - but still it was not enough, and so Richard spent the day in bed whilst I went out to explore Jodhpur with Bhupinder, my reluctant guide. I think Bhupinder preffered Richard's company, and I'm not surprised. My face can be so unexpressive; it takes a lot of effort on my part to smile or look happy, and in the heat I felt my facial muscles strain and give up and it must have looked like I was permanently angry. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

There are four highlights, must-see wonders in Jodhpur that it would be a shame to miss. The last of these, Umaid Bhavan Palace is the most modern palace in India, and one of the last great classical architectural enterprises in the country. We visited it late in the day, so fortunately Richard had recovered enough to see it. We also returned to one of the earlier treasures, Jaswant Thada, a delicate marble memorial for Maharaja Jaswant Singh II, who is interred in a tomb within this cenotaph.

The two most outstanding sights in Jodhpur are found at the same location, interestingly right next to Jaswant Thada. Mehrangarh Fort was never taken by an attacking force, until the British claimed it as our own and walked right in. It dominates the skyline of Jodhpur and is as intimidating on its inside as it is without. However, what made it special for me, and on that day sadly only for me, was the view it offered of the Blue City below, the picture you can see at the top of this entry. As I stood on the ramparts of the fortress, a cool breeze sweeping over me that felt like a thousand kisses, I imagined myself to be a scholar-warrior, home from my battles to take leisure in my studies of the world. As with my experience at the Monsoon Palace in Udaipur, this is one of the moments in my life that I hold onto most dearly. They are moments that could never be wholly replicated, or even described, but that is the wonder and the priveledge of experiencing them.

On India04: Udaipur

2005-04-22T12:24:00.000+01:00

Udaipur
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

Richard and I stayed for just one night in the city of Jai Singh. The next morning we set out bright and early in Bhupinder's Tata taxicab, heading south to Udaipur. Legend has it Udai Singh was blessed by a hermit on the site of the city's creation; he was told that it was an ideal place for a city, and so it turned out to be.

Udaipur is a city of lakes, the most famous of which is Lake Pichola, at the heart of which proudly stands the lake palace. Udaipur has something of an old-world charm to it, gentle and relaxing in a way I didn't experience again during my stay in India. We stayed at a hotel with magnificent views of the land around, and enjoyed our excursions into the city proper.

On a hill beyond the city is the Monsoon Palace, a decaying, melancholy building that served as a summer retreat for the Maharana when the city became too unbearable. We arrived as the Sun began to set, and the place was almost deserted. It was the most beautiful moment in a day saturated with beautiful moments, and I could have stretched it out for an eternity. As it was, no sooner had we arrived than we began our rapid descent back down the hill, Bhupinder with a crazed look in his eyes as we swerved around hairpin corners, dodging traffic and narrowly avoiding plummeting to a painful death time and again. You've got to love Indian driving.

On The Education System of Japan

2005-04-22T09:31:00.000+01:00

IMG_3896
Originally uploaded by shio.

For six months I lived in Japan, in the city of Nagano, a great sprawling mess of a place in the foothills of the Japanese Alps. I taught English conversation, as one does, and spent many a great lesson talking with my students about things that mattered.

Or rather, I didn't.

Perhaps the most enlightening conversation I had was with a stranger on the streets near my school. I was heading home one night, when this balding slob of a Japanese man lurched my way and started talking. His English was excellent, and I could tell from his gesticulations that he had spent time abroad (I could tell, because none of my students gesticulated, even when that was the focus of the lesson).

I was anxious to get away from him, though I don't know why. I suppose I don't take kindly to unwanted or unasked for companions, and as he leaned over me spitting the words out, I look around for an escape.

He went on and on as though he hadn't spoken English in so long that he was like a drunk who had travelled too long looking for a toilet. He went from one topic to another, with barely a pause for breath; he talked about the fine sporting venues in Nagano, once the host of the Winter Olympics, and he encouraged me to join one of the swimming clubs. "I will, I will," I reassured him, lying with a weak smile.

But then, all of a sudden, he became interesting. "What do you think of Japanese students?" he asked me. Instantly I thought back to my studies of Japanese culture, and responded politely as I thought he expected me to: "They work very hard and are good students." Or something similarly void of sentiment. "They're ignorant!" he said, practically shouting at me. I was taken aback by what he said, and couldn't believe it. The Japanese youth of today - ignorant? It seemed absurd. Look at what modern Japan produces: Sony, Toshiba, Fuji, Kitano Takeshi-san. How could one possibly suggest ignorance in such a society? The man looked at me, and for the first time I looked at him, and there was a silence that was at once uncomfortable and dearly welcome. I took my leave of him, shaking his hand and memorising his features so I could avoid him better in the future.

I've dwelt on that conversation often, and I regret not having paid more attention. I realise what the mistake was that I made: I've always considered "ignorance" and "intelligence" to be polar opposites on the same scale. That isn't true. Whilst it is wonderful to possess a little intelligence, it is possible at the same time to be greatly ignorant. It is a variant of the nature versus nurture debate; one can surely be born intelligent (and this intelligence can be developed with help, so it straddles nature and nurture), but the only cure of ignorance is good education, either delivered by a teacher or a parent or personally through reading and exposure to culture.

The educational system employed by Japan is not one that I would wish on any future children of mine. The Japanese work ethic is formidable, and learnt well at an early age, but despite all the lessons and hours spent at "cram school" Japanese students are not encouraged to think critically. And if you are unable to think critically, then you are not able to evaluate the information being supplied to you, and so if this information is useless or false you remain ignorant.

This practice has gained world attention recently, with the the release of a new set of Japanese textbooks. These books gloss over Japan's war years, making light of such atrocities as the "Rape of Nanjing," and have caused a major diplomatic storm between Japan and its neighbours China and South Korea.

If this is what is being taught in Japanese schools, perhaps it will be a long time before the pervading culture of ignorance comes to an end.

Three interesting asides. One: I had one student in particular who attended these "cram schools," and whenever she came in and apologised for being late (though she never was), because of her trouble with pronunciation, it always sounded like she had come straight from "clown school."

Two: I once tested my students on their general knowledge as part of a lesson: they were each given a map of the world, and a set of pictures of major landmarks, such as the Great Wall of China, and the Eiffel Tower. The lesson taught communication skills - they had to tell each other where to place each landmark on the map - but although their English was effectively spot on, their guesses were not. One student even placed The White House in Mongolia, which was quite amusing.

Three: a serious consequence of the early years of schooling in Japan, where students are pushed harder than anywhere else I know (most don't stop studying until ten at night), is that university is seen as a prize awarded on admittance, and once reached no further work must be done to secure it. There are parallels with the English system, but I've seen my brother studying at university, and he works very hard, much harder even than at his A-Levels, and he's going to be a great success. That doesn't appear to be the attitude shared by many in Japan.

On India04: Jaipur Part One

2005-04-21T14:16:00.000+01:00

Jaipur
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I've meant to write about my experiences in India for so long now that I've forgotten most of what I didn't like and can only remember the bits that I did. When I was there, with my friend Richard Willis, there was so much that we both hated that we very nearly gave up after one night, but now, as I look back on those traumatic three weeks, I realise that it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life.

When we arrived in Delhi, the airport was practically deserted. It was early but I expected the place to be buzzing; we had flown out of Dubai at three in the morning and even then it was packed. We took a taxi into the capital, and our hotel on Connaught Place. We had a rough experience on the way, being shouted at by the guy who led us to the taxi; evidently I hadn't offered him a reasonable enough tip for the two minutes' work he'd done. He told us how much to give the driver, only for the driver to demand double, since there were two of us. We were too exhausted to put up a fight but his attitude contributed to the sickness we both felt in our hearts.

Originally we had arranged to travel around Rajasthan by train, but a visit to the central booking office at Delhi station was enough to make me feel sick at the prospect. I had never before been witness to the level of poverty I saw that day, and nothing I have done in my life was enough to prepare me for it. As we approached the main station building we were accosted several times by men trying to convince us that the tourist office was shut; we hadn't even said that that was where we were heading.

We barely slept all night. We talked at length about what lay ahead, and resolved finally to swallow our pride and book tickets home in the morning. First thing we left for the internet cafe, but as luck would have it, it was closed. We spoke to the hotel manager, who we had befriended, about our worries and he suggested that we visit his friend, who ran a tour company. The office was just across the street from the hotel, though crossing the crowded thoroughfare was as simple as swimming across the Ganges, and just as dangerous.

Our discussions proceeded for some time. The original plans drawn up by Richard and I were altered and then ultimately scrapped, with trains replaced for the most part by a form of taxi service. Our travels could be salvaged, at the cost of £300. As I was taken around Delhi looking for an American Express office, or somewhere that would give cash advances on a credit card, I began to feel sick to my stomach, and started almost shivering. The world seemed very far away as I entered the building and marched up the stairs, and I could barely look the teller in the eye as my money was counted out.

I was nervous about this new arrangement - we both were. We had already learnt that there were two principal types in India: those who wanted your money, and those who had your money but wanted more. We were worried that our driver, Bhupinder, might be of the latter, and at times our fears were confirmed as we were dragged from one commission-generating enterprise to another.

The great pain and anxiety I had felt in Delhi, that great heaving mass of a city, that cesspit, that apocalyptic vision of a world gone crazy with over population, all of it faded away when we arrived in Jaipur.

Jaipur is the real Rajasthan. It is why we risked so much and spent so much getting to India. Our first view of Amber fort, as we rounded a hill and cast our eyes up, was magnificent. Jaipur is a visual feast, full of temples and forts and palaces and the most extraordinary colour. By nightfall the horror of Delhi fell away from us as the world does for astronauts.

On The Statue of Liberty

2005-04-21T13:06:00.000+01:00

newyork001
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

My most recent travels took me to New York, for my brother's 22nd birthday. It was the first time I had visited this great city, though I've been to the USA many times before.

This shot was taken at the end of our second day. We had split up - my Mum, Richard and Tammy having gone shopping whilst I explored Manhattan, taking photographs. In the morning we had considered taking the ferry out to see the statue properly, but one look at the choppy waters was enough to dissuade us. I returned on my own, hoping to get across, but I was too late. My plan had been to go over to the statue, take some photos, and then on our return to England surprise everyone with what I'd produced. "When did you take those?" I would be asked.

Instead, I had to settle for this, a rather melancholic sunset, the statue competing with the dockyard cranes for attention. I love this photo, because it perfectly encapsulates how I felt on that cold night in February, alone with my thoughts.

On Wondir

2005-04-21T11:54:00.000+01:00

Recently Boing Boing reported on the launch of a new service, operating in competition with Google Answers. It's called Wondir, and differs most importantly in that it is a free service, and questions can be answered by anyone.

So how does it compare with Google Answers? The google variant asks for a price upfront: if you want a question answering then you have to pay for it. The beauty of this sweeps both ways: the person answering the question is rewarded for their efforts, and the person asking the question makes for damn sure it can't be answered with a two-second search on Wikipedia.

I haven't spent much time on google's site, but I'm keen to; soon I'll have a lot more free time and I want to put it to some good use. I don't what the vetting process is for becoming a researcher; I get the feeling from the "over 500 carefully screened researchers" statement on the front page that it's fairly stringent. I've signed up with Wondir already, and answered some questions, but a lot of them are phrased so badly as to be wholly unintelligible, and others are a plain waste of time.

However, the good questions are the kind you won't see on google. They're generally more personal, or personable, questions, such as this one on Donnie Darko. Answering this question is a totally different experience to researching a question on a specialist or niche topic. These questions are one of wondir's redeeming features; the other is the tip jar.

Like the answer you've been given? As a way of saying thank you, you can give the respondent a cash tip, or just provide some peer-review feedback, similar to Amazon's reviewer ratings. I doubt anyone is going to get money out of the site (but that may change as it grows) but I like the feeling I get when I see that my peer rating has improved (these are the green stars that show how well received your responses are; the gold ones show how many posts you've made, relative to the peer group in general).

Wondir has a lot of work to do if it wants to seriously compete with the likes of Google Answers. Sure, it's a free service, but to survive it will need to attract a lot of repeat custom. I would suggest that in time the number of inane questions will diminish, since these are posted by people who have been led to the site by some link or other and decided to have a laugh by asking "Does Jeeves like men?" Getting people to come back is enormously difficult (attracting them in the first place is only slightly easier, of course), but by instilling a sense of community it has a good chance, and I don't mind putting the hours in until the site either matures or dies.

Oh, and the name: Wondir. Reminds me of the Oneders from "That Thing You Do." Hardly the finest name...

On Yahoo! Mail Plus

2005-04-21T11:37:00.000+01:00

After much deliberation, this week I went ahead and upgraded my Yahoo! email to the premium account. I've used the same email address since practically my first year online, circa 1998. Yahoo! has been good to me - very little in the way of spam gets past the filters I've set up and the ones it automatically generates, and so I didn't feel too bad in investing £11.99 on an annual upgrade.

As the adverts proclaim, that's less than a pound per month, and considering the junk I often buy, money well spent. I now have 2Gb of storage space, no adverts, and an all-round better feel to the application. Already I have spent some time organising my emails properly, sorting them into folders and saving the important ones; I could have done this ages ago but strangely, now that I'm paying for the service and the adverts have gone, I feel more motivated to do so.

It could be that I feel as though I own this email address - it's finally mine, belongs only to me.

However, no subscription is without its disappointments; otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered commenting on Plus. Two things I'm annoyed with. Firstly, the stationery service that comes with the upgraded service only works in IE, and I use Firefox, exclusively. Surely if Blogger can handle inline web applications like this, surely Yahoo! could do so too?

The second problem is with the "free" gift that comes with the subscription: £20 of vouchers for Virgin wine. I don't drink wine, but that's not a problem, it can make for a good gift. What is terribly, terribly disappointing is that the vouchers can only be redeemed when you spend £45 or more! They don't publicise this fact on the advertising! Effectively, I'll never use the vouchers: to me they are worthless, and I would preferred not to have been offered them at all if that was the proviso.

But am I content with my purchase? Overall, yes. I could have continued with the free account, but the adverts were a pain and I was running out of spam filters. I could have changed to a different email supplier; I was kindly given a gmail invitation some time ago. But I have had my Yahoo! email address for so long it's practically etched into my memory, and any attempt to replace it would have proven flawed.

The vouchers are a loss, but I didn't sign up for what they were giving away - I wanted the premium email service, first and foremost. If Yahoo! can fix the problem they seem to be having with non-IE browsers, then I'll be much happier. I've a funny feeling that in the coming months and years, Yahoo! will invest in the premium services they offer (including email - and I expect to see wider integration with the other Yahoo! services), and I will be ready to benefit when they do.

On "Hector"

2005-04-20T14:35:00.000+01:00

Hector
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

Hector, the world. The world, Hector. Okay, now the introductions are done, let me tell you a little about Hector.

Firstly, he is a West Highland Terrier, and in this photo he is only eight weeks old. His interests include biting ankles (the relevance of which you might infer from his name), rolling in moss, and, well, that's all I know. I've only just met him - but rest assured you'll learn more about this special little puppy in the posts to come. Every blog needs a dog.

A Brief Note on the Eponymology of Hector. We didn't spend long on thinking up a name. An early suggestion, Spartacus, was rejected because my Mum, whose dog Hector is, didn't want to be shouting "Spartacus!" across the fields where he would go running. That led to the suggestion of "Khan" for exactly the reason Mum wouldn't have wanted, and when that was immediately discarded, Richard (my brother) came up with "Hector", after the Trojan prince slain by Achilles. I think it's perfect, and ironic too considering Hector's passion for ankles.

On How Minesweeper is a Metaphor for Women

2005-04-20T13:58:00.000+01:00

Minesweeper
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I've played Minesweeper a lot recently - arguably too much, but now that my scores are as good as I'll ever get them, I'll stop before my boss catches me - and I'm startled to discover just how much it says about how to deal with women.

Bearing in mind this is all just theory, here are some rules:

If you go too quickly you'll make a silly mistake and have to start again.

If you go too slowly you'll never score.

A good start is essential.

You'll get knocked back more times than you care to remember, but just click the happy face and start again each time.

Trust your instincts, but be wary of guesswork - your guesses are wrong more times than they are right.

Nobody's interested in your fastest times, no matter what you think.

Playing with cold hands is no good at all.

Often you'll find yourself losing for no good reason. The game can be unfair and totally unjust - exactly like Minesweeper.

If you start with a bad hand it's better to give up and end on good terms, whilst the face is still smiling.

Winning once does not mean that you will win again the next time you play.

The harder levels are more satisfying than the easy level, and last longer. However, you'll get knocked back more often.

You can get in trouble with little more than a slip of your finger.

You have to concentrate hard all the time, and the moment you stop concentrating is the moment you lose. Having said that, concentrate too hard and you might take longer than is generally considered acceptable, especially on the easy level.

People will feel uncomfortable if you sit and stare, with your mouth open and your tongue sticking out (even if it's just because you're concentrating hard).

When you guess and you're right, or you don't immediately lose, it can feel terrific.

Minesweeper suggests monogamy - one game at a time is enough for any man. Also, 1 is the best number in Minesweeper; sixes and sevens are uncommon but curiously they're quite exciting so maybe Minesweeper is really suggesting that you become a swinger whilst remaining faithful to your partner.

Practicing on your own is healthy - but will it make you blind if you do it too much?

Eventually you will tire of Minesweeper and take up a different hobby. Alternatively, you will start looking for more extreme versions of Minesweeper - be wary of this fetishisation, as it could get creepy.

The right person could quite easily pad this out to thesis level - any takers?

On the Proliferation of Blogs, and My Contribution

2005-04-20T12:57:00.000+01:00

If trends continue, soon there will be more blogs than people; beyond that, one day there will be more blogs than atoms in the known universe. Science teachers will use the analogy that if someone took each blog in turn and moved it into another pile at the rate of one blog per second, it would take longer than the most upwardly-mobile estimate for the age of the universe (originally this analogy was used in describing the number of atoms in one mole of a substance).

There are that many blogs, in short, that I've decided it's about damn time that I get one myself, so here it is.