Occasional Observations

Obviously billg is more hip than me, as he beat me by several days in deleting his Facebook profile, but we're in the same club as mine's gone. I just got so sick of banality - like being notified that I've been bitten by a vampire or that someone's bought me a virtual Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster.

A couple of weeks away from the site made me realize that I wasn't missing it any more.

What a fickle lot we are. When I first signed up for Facebook, way back in the annals of history (it was almost a full year ago, I'm sure), it was just The Best Website in the World. I visited every day and carefully added only friends - not business friends / associates / clients / colleagues. It was my social networking site for letting my hair down. That is, until my business contacts piled in. Feeling that I could not easily refuse them (sorry! you got the wrong me!) I also changed my profile to make it a bit more corporate ... and a bit less fun.

That was the start of the slippery slope. But it was the endless banal applications that tipped me over - skiiers vs snowboarders, vampires vs werewolves, etc. And having found most of my Facebook-using contacts the thrill of discovery has gone. I really still like the status updates but Twitter does it better. But that's about the only thing I still valued on Facebook. And having reached that point, it was time to go.

Of course I had a few last-second qualms about deleting my profile - what would I be missing out on? Well, nothing I can't get elsewhere on Flickr, Twitter, from email, IM and actually meeting and talking to people.

So I've gone. My account is deactivated. I'm an ex-Facebooker. I've disappeared. The account deactivation process offers cowards an easy way back - just log-in again as usual and receive an email on how to reactivate. Let's see if I'm missing anything...

PS I take back that comment about Twitter - I've deleted my account there, too.

Labels: social networking

A few months back, I mentioned the 3GB that Google Desktop was swallowing. I thought the index was residing on my D drive but it turns out that this was just an old version of the index taking up a mere 818MB. As the 3GB was still growing, and was impacting the performance of my 20GB C drive partition, it was time to act.

So out with the whole thing - and start over. A drastic move I know. Although I love the index especially for its ability to magically make deleted and purged emails reappear, I'm probably able to live without emails I deleted a year or more ago.

Google Desktop was therefore purged, including all traces (eg the registry) and then I started again. This time around I'm also being more selective in ripping through the network drives. I don't really need 2004 PPT decks. In fact, they should not really even be on the server any more but that's another story.

There's probably a GDS plug-in for indexing shared Exchange folders ... THAT I would find useful. Off to search now.

Labels: nerd, tech

Here's my open letter to my fallen hero, Martha Stewart:

Hey Martha,

Wot no DLD blog entry? But you promised. A promise is a promise, remember. There were about 1000 people there at the conference when you made that promise and I didn't see you crossing your fingers behind your back. I looked... just making sure.

I know that after the hard lessons you learned in prison - where you were sent for lying to Government officials investigating stock option irregularities - that you don't tell lies any more. So I'm sure the lack of a post explaining just how badly you crashed and burned at DLD is just an oversight.

Second, after we chatted at DLD I added you as a friend on Facebook. I also poked you (in a Web 2.0 kinda way, anything else would be simply unthinkable) but you still haven't added me. I know you're really busy, going to the Super Bowl and that, but come on, you said ...

Labels: Martha, rant

Living close to Munich means we tend to spot most new BMW models on the road before they've officially launched. A few years back, my first glimpse of a 6 Series was seeing one being driven at actually rather ridiculous speeds on the twisty bits between Lenggries and Silvenstein. I'm a fan of cutting corners to straighten out minor bends, but at an estimated 140kmh when there's oncoming traffic (namely, me)?

Last weekend we were overhauled by an X6 SUV coupe as we joined the A95 autobahn heading south. "Quick daddy, catch it up!" urged the boys. Ah, no chance - it was being driven at around 200kmh, and our Peugeot 807 doesn't do 200 in such a short distance like the 25km or so to the end of the autobahn - it needs a bit more acceleration room. When I first saw it in the mirror, I thought the grille was a bit strange. It's not exactly the kidneys (although, honestly, BMW has changed the shape of these so often it's becoming boring) and I wondered why a Dodge Ram had a BMW roundel (albeit a black one) before I realized.

Tonight, headed out of Munich, I saw it / another one. Again, the BMW badge is blacked out. This is one big car - from my lowly seat I couldn't see the instrument binnacles, just caught a glimpse of the beardy driver. A test driver, I presume ... and once we reached the end of the 80kmh section, I got to see how the twin-turbo V8 gasoline engine pulls. The answer: quite impressive.

This is a pre-prod model that BMW's shipped over from Spartanburg - as they're all made there. What was somewhat interesting (for us petrolheads) was that the turn signals on the Munich-registered X6 were US spec, ie they blinked red not orange. Surely this is a pretty minor mod for the German highway?

Labels: petrolhead

Just back from 24 hours in Britain - which appears to be more and more of a nanny state, with speed cameras all over the roads (at least one per mile on the main drag into Plymouth) and warning signs everywhere else.

At Birmingham International Airport, I came across the ultimate in mean-ness: they'd locked the electricity power points. So nobody's going to sponge a few KW of free electricity from them, oh no. At around 15p per kilowatt hour, my laptop would have used at most 1p's worth of electricity while I gave the airport GBP5 for the privilege of using their wi-fi network. OK, so you'd say they don't have to give me free electricity, but since a fiver is a lot for an hour online, it would have been a nice touch.

Labels: rant

On a short layover at Zurich Airport and I'm just too lazy to keep hunting down the departures board for my connecting flight - because the info is also available on a screen near me - my desktop. Sometimes, WLAN and portable computers / devices really make life a bit easier. This is one of them.

My flight has just been called, I think - the departures board is showing "Go to the exit"...

Labels: mobile

It's the breaking news of the day - Microsoft has announced a near-$45 billion bid to buy Yahoo! This has been a rumor for a few weeks - one of the panellists at DLD even mentioned it. The synergies will mean that there's a true competitor for Google.

But wait. I know the real reason that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo! They want that exclamation mark, aka the squeak.

Tell me I'm wrong.

Labels: search