Mark O’Meara: the blog

I am sure it is a sign of my rapid aging but I like a webpage to resemble paper in as much as it is dark text or a light (or white even) surface. The background doesn’t have to be white for me but I do like it a good deal lighter than the text.

I know you can easily get a high contrast with white text on a black background but I find I get tired of reading that quite quickly. I know that scheme works for rock concert t-shirts but I think that’s probably about the extent of it.

Lesson for the day - even before middle age I am a grumpy old man.

Rounds are over so naturally it is assignment season all over again.

I only have three and they are not massive amounts of work. Nevertheless I am behind on them and not getting them done to the reasonably unambitous timetable I had set.

Such is life. It will work itself out just like it has so many times before.

Lesson for the day - chaos is less scary after you meet it this many times.

I talk to the every freakily talented Coffee Bean about guitar and her freakish ability.

2MB and six minutes.

Listen

Lesson for the day - I always enjoy talking to the plain clever.

My return to work and uni yesterday left me feeling like a kid on red fizzy-drink. Work was ok but all the phaffing surrounding basically no content at uni for five hours did me in.

I was thinking of going to the open mic but in the end I opted for a better course. I had a cuddle with Finn for a while before he refused to go to bed and took EmmyLou for a half-hour walk. Happily I can report that I felt much better and calmer for doing this simple things.

Lesson for the day - keeping slowly busy is tonic and a virtue.

I have been listening to some more of the Firefly Talk podcasts and they were mentioning some moments from the episode The Message so we watched it last night. Much as I like the Big Damn Movie (Serenity) there is a calm, quality and style to the thirteen episodes that is just at a higher level again.

Until I watched an episode again I had almost forgotten just how good the series is. Now I just want to watch it all again.

Sadly university assignments beckon.

Lesson for the day - some telly is just too damn pretty.

Back in 1994 I foolishly looked at the text based World Wide Web and confidently announced that I didn’t think it was going to take off.

Of course what I failed to realise at the time is that images, colours, cookies, personalised content, webmail, easy publishing, and masses and masses of information were coming to this medium I thought was a dead end.

In short it would evolve and continue to evolve pretty much continously. And it is true that the web services I value most these day, like blogs, RSS, Gmail and Flickr were unthinkable but then that’s 12 years of constant evolution for you. Standing on the shoulders of giants means you end up reaching pretty high and I’m all in favour of it.

But talk of Web 2.0 strikes me as sheer hucksterism. You’d swear people have never published or interacted on the internet before 2006. Sure, there are new and exciting things but there is no line in the sand that marks “old internet” from “new internet”. It strikes me that this is really just trying to put a label on it to try to sell conferences, books and yourself.

All of this has been said much more clearly by one of my favourite bloggers over at Blogography.

Lesson for the day - it does helps when technologies, like fools, have obvious signs and labels.

On Friday at school I was struggling with disengaged and disruptive students and by Monday, back at university, I am a disengaged and disruptive student.

Lesson for the day - waffle introduces all kinds of evil.

I just polished off three pancakes with cheese and salami on one side of them.

Yum.

Lesson for the day - there is a reason I am a fat bastard.

Just now I was wondering around, glass in hand, wondering where my drink was.

Lesson for the day - I am that stupid.

A fellow called Craig explained to me that he wouldn’t use MySpace anymore because they put advertising on your free page. I figure you don’t get something for nothing but he felt that his good reputation was being used to sell things like beer and does feel that a role model should not do such things.

He asked me if I would allow my songs to be used in a commercial and the answer is “Hell yes!”. I don’t know that it would make anyone buy much but I could see Slow Motion used in an ad for an inexpensive white wine for something similar. Anyhow I thought I’d do a bit of unpaid commerical promotional for y’all.

When I was in JB the other day I noticed they are selling copies of Serenity for just over $15 which makes this a great time to grab a copy. Firefly is still aroun $60 but will be coming down to $30 in a couple of weeks.

Now I quite enjoyed a bit of X-Files way back when but probably am not so keen as to buy it on DVD. But in case any of you as fans I notice that you’ll be abe to pickup a half season for $15 next week. That’s $255 for all nine seasons which might work for fans I guess.

I also noticed that EzyDVD have Dead Again for just under $10. This is one of my all time favourite films so if you don’t have a copy then obviously this is the time to get one. Also at this price Fletch, Patriot Games and The Fugitive which, while not classics, are good films and certain worth the price.

Lesson for the day - if you must consume then consume good quality things.