News and views on domain names, the Internet and life in general
From the category archives:
Internet thinker and political operator David Weinberger has posed an interesting question: how do we design a question-and-answer format for politicians that is truly democratic?
Weinberger’s blog post was noted by Andrew McLaughlin on his Facebook page – Andrew is the White House Deputy CTO and the man more than any other that could make a [...]
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ICANN’s 35th meeting in Sydney finished on Friday and I am now off on a two-week holiday with Sapna checking out this great country.
I’d love to say I’m going to blog about the trip but frankly I don’t want to even see a computer for the next fortnight. Plus, we’ll be spending a chunk of [...]
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So one of the many questions rolling around my head, particularly since living in the United States, has been: was is American beer so bad?
It really is bad. I know Brits get mocked for flat, warm beer (I love it – taste is terrific), but American beer – your Coors, Buds and Millers – really is absolutely dreadful. Tastes of nothing at all, doesn’t refresh or quench. Just about the only thing it does is get your drunk if you can stand to drink enough of it.
Well, I have found out the answer. There was a History Channel documentary on US brewing history at the weekend and it was easy to define from that this peculiarity that an entire nation loves drinking rat’s piss while everyone else in the world has spent centuries savouring their beer.
And this is the three-part answer:
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So after 18 months of retaining my UK phone while living in the US, I finally got tired of paying £30 a month for absolutely nothing and killed the contract. It ends next week
Why did I keep it for so long? Well, for one, I didn’t expect to stay in the States all that long. I figured ICANN would drive me nuts within a year and I’d move back to Blighty. Plus I didn’t want to rely on just a work phone for contact with friends and family. And lastly I didn’t want to lose my telephone number – 07932 783686 – which I have had for over a decade.
Well, I am still at ICANN and so still in the States and I didn’t use my UK phone because to use it over here was prohibitively expensive. I don’t rely on just my work phone for contact – I mostly use Skype to contact friends and family. It’s free and it comes with pictures. And as for losing the number… Well I am the proud owner of a .tel domain name.
In fact, due to my name being slightly unusual, I have kieren.tel.
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So I was in Palm Springs this weekend in an effort to get out of Los Angeles and relax a little. We stayed at The Riviera – which was apparently where Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe etc used to hang out when Palm Springs was full of young Hollywood stars rather than old gay couples.
The Riviera was great. Palm Springs was great but the highlights of the weekend was an art show on a patch of grass that we stumbled across while having a stroll on Sunday. This is no doubt a famous show and I’m showing my ignorance, but I have to say I was impressed – the quality was very high and the prices very reasonable.
There was an artist called Greg Clarke who did some great work, using different chemicals to stain a huge piece of copper according to this designs. Mostly he drew women – faces and forms – but filled the outline with lots of other faces and people. You could spend hours looking at it – very precise and neat. Unfortunately they were also huge pieces of copper and cost a few thousand dollars each so I took his name and decided that if his pieces kept playing in my mind, I might have to do something about it.
So we wandered around some other work – lots of pictures printed on canvas, some nice landscapes, some bright and colourful cartoon-like pieces. And then I turn the corner of one of the lines of stalls and was struck dumb by a number of walls of striking beautiful Asian art. I’ve very glad they were priced reasonably as I have no doubt I would have walked away with one of these pieces, no matter what.
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Here is the third and final part of a favourite childhood story of mine, The Magic Paintbrush, adapted by Fran Hunia from the traditional Chinese tale in 1979, and illustrated by Martin Aitchison.
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Here is the second part of one of my favourite two childhood stories, The Magic Paintbrush, adapted by Fran Hunia from the traditional Chinese tale in 1979, and wonderfully illustrated by Martin Aitchison.
The first part came be found here. And the third and final part is here. I will stick up the next few days. Enjoy.
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I was pathetically pleased over the weekend to come across an absolute favourite story book of mine from when I was a child.
I was visiting my parents for Easter and have occasionally had a look for this particular set of story books but never found them. Anyway, my sister somehow knew where they were so (under the eves, accessed through a tiny door down the side of my brother’s bed) and dug them out for me.
There was two in particular that I loved – The Magic Paintbrush, and The Magic Stone, for reasons I hope become apparent. I loved the illustrations as well – done by Martin Aitchison. Mr Aitchison has his own website where he also sells original illustrations. I note there is a Magic Painbrush one there for £300.
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I really don’t get this one. I have just moved from T-Mobile to Vodafone because T-Mobile lied about me being able to receive email. I have a new phone. It's works lovely. Fine.
Then I get a phonecall Saturday lunchtime on my mobile asking to speak to Mr McCarthy. Speaking. It’s Nick from Vodafone wondering if everything is fine with my new phone and if I have any problems.
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