Dinosaur Thing

Things will get better

Being Scottish I take the end of the year very seriously. I know its just another day but I think its good for the human soul to bring things to an end, create the potential for a new beginning and most importantly move on. From a personal point of view I can't wait to see the end of 2008 and I guess most people are in the same boat. What with the current credit crisis and for that matter the continuing world poverty, conflict in the middle east and rampage of AIDs which seems to have been forgotten about of late. On the former matter I reminded myself the other day of one of my very very few prophetic moments in my life. It happened during a conversation in 1986 with a guy called Ben Wenglin who is both one of the most remarkable people I've met in my life and one of the most likeable. Ben was loved by everyone who met him and never looked miserable, unhappy or passed you without an insightful comment that just lifted you. On this particular day though he looked extremely sad. I asked him why and he said that he was just worried at the state of the world and what his children and grand-children will have to face. Bearing in mind that this was 1986 so the Berlin Wall was still up, the USSR was still pretty intimidating and Ronald Reagan was playing games with his "Star Wars" initiative, Chernobyl was polluting most of Europe, Apartheid was in full flow in South Africa and the Americans had just bombed Libya. So you could see what he meant. Almost without thinking I disagreed with him. "I'm optimistic" I said. "The world's communications are getting better, more people have cameras and access to the media so the bad guys are getting easier to find and once they are found out people don't follow bad guys".

And that's pretty much how I see things now. This credit crunch is exactly that. The bad guys getting found out and the more we learn about them the harder it will be for other bad guys to continue and ultimately good will prevail. It just might be a little rough for a while.

So have a lovely Christmas break and brace yourself for a better 2009.

My favourite Albums of 2008

I try and do this most years. My favourite albums of the year for this year couldn't be more diverse.

Daniel Lanois "Here is What is" - This is actually the soundtrack to a movie of the making of the album and has a diverse mixture of Daniel's beautiful country, electro, folk sounds mixed with dialogue between him and fellow produced Brian Eno. Some real gems in there as well as some fairly thought provoking philosophy which I was particularly drawn to. Especially Eno's thoughts that musical beauty often comes from nothing at all which echo's my own thoughts that anyone can be an artist with the right time and attitude.

Elbow "Seldom Seen Kid" - This is easily my favourite album of the year and a worthy Mercury Prize winner. "One Day like this" lifted my heart on more than one occasion in this tough year and the rest of the album is a masterpiece by about the 4th listen.

Peter Gabriel's "Big Blue Ball" project - As this took an age to complete I had pretty low expectations of it and in a way the shame is that such brilliant songs as "Exit Through You", "Altus Silva" and "Whole Thing" which deserve a bigger audience are buried here. After "One World One Voice" this is my favourite world music album of all time.

Flight of the Conchords - Ok so its a novelty album but worth a few listens to get all the jokes. This gave me plenty of little chuckles all year and "The Most Beautiful Girl (in the room)" is excellent.

Portishead's "Third" - Man this must have been a nightmare for their record company. Such a strong departure from their classic 90's albums but this is a frighteningly good album.

Ruggly Puffs

One of my fellow Virtual Worlds travellers, Alex Cullum from Statoil Hydro, has just had a children's book published called "Ruggly Puffs: the Bear Detective" . Probably worth a read if not a last minute stocking filler. Come to think of it this is obviously the year for book deals. I mentioned my personal coach, Mark Fritz's 2 books in an earlier blog as well as one of my fellow web 2.0 champions at BP, Russ Whitfield's sci-fi fantasy book "Gladiatrix" and now my brother in law tells me he's got a book deal to write the history of the AK-47 (ahem !).

40th Anniversary of the mouse

I love this clip from the BBC to celebrate Doug Engelbart's first demo of the mouse. Unlike so many scientific clips of the time which missed the mark by a mile (flying cars etc.) this one was absolutely spot on and I can't help but wonder if it was the attention to the detail of the human interaction with the computer that was key. I was very priviliged last year to see the original Engelbart and English wooden mouse at SRI's labs in Menlo Park. It was far from the sophisticated model here but clearly pioneering.

Real Evidence of the Credit Crunch

Just passed a variable pricing sign at a gas station in Minneapolis that has the price per gallon for unleaded, price per pack of Marlboro lites and price per cup of coffee. Tough times !!

A very new millennium dilemma

So what do you do when you have a great gamer id (Logan888 on Xbox live and Logan Jedburgh in Second Life) and your niece likes it so much she names her baby after it? Little Logan Alan Wright was born last Thursday morning in Glasgow.