Vancouver

Ray tells me:
Here's a look at the fresh snow here this morning earlier.... West Vancouver is to your left, and North Vancouver is to the right. This building is sitting almost on the borderline between them. The cleared right-of-way up the side of that nearest hill on the right is the cable-car system for the Grouse Mountain Skyride & ski area. The residential areas on the mountainsides to the left are in "British Properties" so named because the Guinness family (of grog fame) donated the money for our Lions Gate Bridge, and were given in return a tract of land on the hillside for future development. It's now reportedly the richest suburb in Canada. Hard to tell, looking at it from here. But up there, if you have to ask "How Much?", you can't afford it.
Cheers, Ray ("oldest living blogger") (USA today mention.)

Aren't digital cameras and the Internet wonderful? A picture you took may be available world-wide literally within a couple of minutes after you took it.

Ray also sent me this. Quote:
"Q: Any idea how many of the 109.2 million blogs you track get no hits in the course of a year?
A: Just over 99 percent. The vast majority of blogs exist in a state of total or near-total obscurity."

Möbius Transformations Revealed

Möbius Transformations Revealed. Very cool.

Sophisticated Insults II, The Umpire Strikes Back

Funny coinkidink, somebody just sent me this.

When insults had class

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
-- Winston Churchill


"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."
-- Clarence Darrow


"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
-- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
-- Groucho Marx

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
-- Mark Twain

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."
-- Oscar Wilde

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend... if you have one."
-- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second..... if there is one."
-- Winston Churchill to Shaw, in response

"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here."
-- Stephen Bishop

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator."
-- John Bright

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
-- Irvin S. Cobb

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others."
-- Samuel Johnson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."
-- Paul Keating

"He had delusions of adequacy."
-- Walter Kerr

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"
-- Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
-- Mae West

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
-- Oscar Wilde

Update:
His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy.
-- Woody Allen

The scarcity mindset

The scarcity mindset dominates humanity.

Small example: the new Amazon Kindle e-book reading device has 250MB of memory built in. This carries the operating system, and beyond that, about 200 books.
200 books is surely enough for most purposes. And you can expand it with SD flash cards.

But consider this: if they had included a GigaByte of memory, this would have cost them maybe three dollars more per device (which sells for $400). Perhaps just one dollar, considering bulk rebates. And they'd have been able to say "holds a thousand books" in the marketing campaign. And their buyers would have felt so much richer, holding "a thousand books" in their hand even before loading any content. And he would have been more eager to buy Amazon's e-books because all this empty space was longing to be filled.

So I think it's silly to save those three dollars. Giving customers more than they expect is a great business strategy.

Lecture on achieving childhood dreams

Lecture on achieving childhood dreams.

P.O blues

Dang, my new Canon pocket cam (see below) should have been delivered last Wednesday, but the local P.O. has trouble.

It seems they have decided to radically reorganize how parcel delivery is done. Probably for good reason, but they decided to do this 1: soon after an "industrial action" (a.k.a. a strike) and 2: a few weeks before Christmas. Result: total chaos. Good choice there. :)

Contact?

Here's how not to make a contact form: make all kinds of irrelevant information required (those with an asterisk) for the form to work.


TTL adds:
Yeah, looks they want to date you or something.

My pet peeve are ones which insist you tell them your "state". At least this one asks for a province. (Just fill in the name of your favourite wine.)

Actually, designing of international forms for postal address is all but impossible. There are tens of different address formats in use. In some Asian countries Postal Address, the concept, has no resemblance to ours. For one, it's upside down. The most significant bit, country name, is on top.

USA

It's amazing such a dominance the USA still has on the Internet. I would have thought that by 2007, two thirds of the web would be outside the US. That may be so, but not for me, not commercially. Almost three quarters of my sales are to the US, and I could really feel on stats that this was Thanksgiving week.

Perhaps it's a language thing. Me, I'm used to doing everything in English, but perhaps a big bulk of web users in most countries will only surf a smaller subsection of web sites in their own language? And yet I have a feeling that if I made a whole site for each of the major languages, it would not change much.

Alex said:
I can almost take it for granted that my US friends have a PC and DSL or Cable modem.
Most of my UK friends, of equivalent social status, may have a PC, and all seem to be dial-up. Even my sister who is a software professional has dial-up, there again, she lives in the comparative sticks/boonies.
So it would seem to be a connectivity issue as much as anything.

Hmm, although it is clear that the US is much ahead in broadband (as Europe is with cell phones), I was not under the impression that the UK was that much behind.
... Thinking about it, I actually have a couple of friends in the US who have mentioned that they don't have broadband available where they live.

I like sequel titles

I like sequel titles.

The Son Of Tarzan.

The Empire Strikes Back.

The Quickening.

Kramer Versus Kramer II, The Revenge.

Apollo 14, This Time It's Personal.

Harry Potter VIII, So You Thought It Was Over?

Mission Impossible IV, Well-Nigh Unlikely.

Hannibal III, Time For Dessert.

Saturday The Forteenth, The Aftermath.

665, The Neighbor of the Beast.

664, The Next-door Neighbor of the Beast.

The Princess Divorcee, Nothing Lasts Forever.

Titanic II, Bobbing Back.

Spider-Man 4, A Lazy Sunday.

Forest Gump II, Gump and Gumper.

Philadelphia 2, He's Back and He's Pissed.

The Mummy III, Don't Expect Any Plot By Now.

Brokeback Mountain 2, A Tale Of Two Lesbians.

The Godfather 4, Older, Wiser, Bitterer.

Toy Story III, Finally Lego.

Lethal Weapon 5, Nursing Home Armageddon.

The Passion Of The Christ The Second, So I'm Home, But Is Anybody Pleased?

Look Who's Talking IV, Talking To Cockroaches by Now.

301, The Mass Funeral.

C Movie, A Wasp's Tale.

Beowulf Again, Longer Swords.

Superman The Prequel, Life On Krypton: Pretty Peaceful Really.

Ironman the Sequel, Upgrading To Brass.

Transformers II, Transforming Your Soul By Meditation.

Van Helsing II, More Kinds Of Monsters.

Ben Hur The Remake, Chariots and Cell Phones.

South Park The Movie II, A Big Rubbery One.

The L Word The Movie, Strap-on Bonanza.

The Matrix 4, Turns Out Nothing Was Real.

Indiana Jones 5, Now Only Vehicle Chases.

Rocky 7, Going Gently Into That Good Night.
-----

The "665, The Neighbor of the Beast" one is not mine. I don't know who made it up, but it's great. - Eolake

Pascal added:

Sequel Titles 2: "Haven't we already done that one?"

Sequel 3: The Trilogy.

Final Fantasy 2: It ain't over even when it's over.

Final Fantasy VII1⁄2: Advent Children

Final Fantasy XIV: Song of the Fat Lady.

Desert Storm 3: This Time We'll Win.

Official Sports League Game 2008: Spring Edition.

Silence of the Cash Cows: Milk'em Dry!

Silence of the Hams: Real Bad Acting.

Store Wars: Clash Of The Price Tags.

Scar Wars: The Dark Nip-Tuck.

Bible III: the Koran.

Bible IV: the Unauthorized Sequel. By Anton Szandor LaVey. Rated Adults Only.
(Former title: Bible IV, Satan Strikes Back.)

Barbara Cartland's Generic Love Story #10,452: Love Is Eternal. (With previously unseen footage!)

Star Wars Ch.7: Siths in Iraq.

Halloween 33: Say "AAAAH!"

Rambo 2008: Last Blood.

Conan Barbarian, Armenian Warrior.

Blog Post 2: The Comments.

World War III: Bush vs Laden.

Honey, I Sold The Kids: Let's Go To Hawaii!

Resident Anonymous Flamer 2: The Big Rubbery Twosome

Marvel vs DC vs Dark Horse vs Ninja Turtles vs Disney vs DragonBall: The Mother Of All Crossovers

Return Home of the Second Revenge of the Hero's Nephew's Neighbor's Girlfriend's Angry Boss And His Dog, Nothing Personal Just Business The Remake: The Ultimate License Cash-In!

One element

I just had a realization:
It seems to me that pretty much all works of art which become hits have one single element which carries the work. One really strong bit.
In a song it might be the main melody line. Or the drum beat.
In a novel it may be the main character, or a setting.
In a picture it may be a combination of colors, or the lines of the central figure.

But it helps me to think of how to create a work, that to make something strong, I have to find/make one single very strong element, and compose the work around that.

Update: this is not meant to be an absolute statement, but mostly a help for creators. For example if you're working on something, and you can't point to an element which you are sure is really strong, the work is not likely to be successful no matter how much you fine tune it.

Mac buyers FAQ

Macintosh buyers' FAQ, by the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg.

Canon on film

Public relations speak: Canon management was asked if Canon is ever going to release another film SLR camera. The answer was: "I can't say what products we have for the future, but in thinking about a question like that you have to look at the ratio of digital to film users in the market now. I can't really say more than that for commercial reasons."

That's answer enough for me. :)

It's funny to me that they apparently think it would hurt them in the marketplace to simply come out and say "no". The reason they won't develop a new film camera is that the market for it has all but disappeared. (I'd be surprised if they could sell a thousand of any new film camera.) So what's the harm in telling this vanishing market that they shouldn't have any false hopes?
If anything it should help sales of existing film cameras if buyers know that there will not be any new models. Or they may buy a digital camera sooner.

---
By the way, language question: if I talk about a book, I'd say "they sold a million copies in the first year". If I was talking about a camera, the word "copies" seem wrong... but which word would it be instead? You can't just use "cameras", because we are talking about just one specific model.

Update: thanks to Damien for suggesting "unit". That'll do well in the context I describe.
But less well in a situation I had last year: I had bought a camera on eBay, and the one I actually got was the same model (Nikon FM), but was more worn and had a different serial number. So it was a different... (blank).
Looking it up, it seems "exemplar" is a correct word for it. Which is funny, because that's exactly the word I would use in Danish. But I've never heard it used in English, so I wonder if everybody would understand it.