Merry Christmas to all… Hope you have had or are having a great day, hope you get something and give something equally good, and hope you spend the day with just the right people.
Some snapshots of my day:
Have a great day!
A busy season for parties… Pictures say it best:
Brought Ben home today… It was a worry for a while, but he’s come through fine, and after another week of treatment he’s all good to go,
Everyone is back home together:
Welcome Benjamin Turner, born today at 1.01pm, weighing in at 4.32kg. He’s doing well, as is his Mum.
Time for an adventure Benji!
Happy birthday to my dear wife Sallie 
You truly mean everything to me.
Even if we did it this year in the strangest place!
Happy birthday to Alexander, the big five year old!
May everything be just how you like it.
After a couple of years break, I am participating in NanoWrimo 2011. The now long-held online tradition sees writers all over the world take on the slightly mad task of writing a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.
I’ve made a good start, pulling over 3600 words in the first two days. Slightly above the required average. I’m not entirely sure how likely I am to finish the whole thing in the time though, with various family commitments this month among other things, but I’ll give it my best shot. In 2008 when I went into it, I’d done 25,000 words after 30 days, but there was enough there that I finished the whole novel just after new year.
That’s the idea, as far as I’m concerned: use this month as a start, and if you finish, great, if not, you’ve got Christmas holidays to get it done still!
The badge on the right will stay there for the month (and beyond if I’m still working on it!) and when they release the word count widgets, I will add one of them there also.
Here we go!
I have a new phone (an iPhone, finally in the smartphone age!) and with it a new phone number. It feels like a new age, so why not…?
Anyway, if you want to contact me, smartphones are more about Twitter, Facebook and email anyway, so use those and you can get my new number as well. I’m now definitely going to be more active on both Twitter and Facebook, so look for me there too.
And there is my Facebook writer fan page — check the box to the right –>
I was at a work conference all day yesterday (and not particularly well either), but the news did filter through anyway. I’ve been reading up on the various reactions since, and thinking about it all myself as well.
There’s not a lot you can say really. The circumstances of his passing would be tragic for anyone, and no doubt his family (which he seems to have kept very private despite his position) would be feeling this loss more than anyone.
But Steve Jobs did and meant a lot for a lot of people. I had always admired Apple products, but for various reasons I had never personally owned one until last year, when I got an iPad. And it’s become my main computing device now… that’s all you need to say to explain the power of the devices. Web browsing, gaming, reading, music creation, you name it. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the iPad, just as he didn’t invent the iPhone or the Mac, but it was his vision and drive that guided Apple in everything they did.
Just as it was in his other main venture (and other possibly even more important impact on my life), Pixar. He didn’t make Pixar’s movies, but he enabled John Lasseter and others the position and environment to work their magic.
Steve Jobs was a product visionary and marketing genius, probably the most important person ever in the industry for actually humanising computing… responsible for the creation of computing devices that actually put the human user first, and completely changing the way we use and look at computers. Even the innovations and devices he didn’t help create often were directly or indirectly inspired by his vision.
This feels almost like the last of no doubt millions of tributes to Jobs published online. There’s been an enormous amount of mainstream press, but I think that there’s more to be learned from the very specific tributes of people I admire who are massive Apple fans. This list will be different for everyone, but the biggest users of Apple products were always creative people.
And I think that’s what everyone who wants to pay tribute to Steve Jobs needs to do — go out and create. Be your own person, make your mark on the world, create something new. The fact that you may just be compelled to do that on an Apple computing device is only a coincidence, but one that works right now more than any other time.
Some tributes:
Pixar Studios remember their friend and boss
Charles Stross (sci fi author and Apple user)
37 Signals (Software developers and big Apple fans)
John Scalzi (Author, blogger and Apple user, talking eloquently about how Macs helped him become a writer)
Jason Kottke (The noted blogger and designer has an excellent round-up of remembrance of Jobs, as well as some of his own thoughts)
Just like everyone else in the world, it seems fitting to put at least something brief down about the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
A lot of conflicting emotions, I must say. It was a terrible event, that goes without saying, but I think straight away the reaction to the event (and the choices around that) is what changed the world moreso than the event itself. We didn’t have to spend 10 years chasing our tail, or invade multiple countries (one minimum being a total waste of time and lives) or spend billions punching at shadows. We’re lucky we just got the main guy responsible, nearly 10 years later.
But as always for me it’s the media, with its orgy of remembrance, and its horror-porn endless replays of the attacks that really get me. I don’t want to watch most of it — I overdosed on it years ago. This takes away nothing from the horror, from the true remembrance that should and must be done by those that have a substantial connection to the attacks or who lost loved ones, but for too many it’s just another form of TV entertainment.
And though I know its wrong, everytime I see these stories about the children of 9/11 or similar, I do wonder if we’ll ever see the stories of the orphans of the Iraq war — the thousands of kids without parents because of that little adventure. This takes away from none of the true suffering of the families of 9/11 victims, but it puts the media attention into perspective. We judge the losses of “our side” to be more important, because that’s how it’s always been done. And nothing really changes.
Part of the things that always come up on these events is “where were you 10 years ago when it happened?” And like most, I can tell a story. Late on the evening of Tuesday, September 11 2001, I was living in Newtown, between jobs and watching “The West Wing” on Channel 9 with my wife. I’m pretty certain it was the episode where President Bartlett’s secretary died and Jed cursed God in Latin on the floor of the National Cathedral. Heavy stuff to be sure, but then there’s a news flash about a plane hitting the World Trade Centre. Sounds serious, but not dire. Back to the fictional, idealised, America. Ten minutes later the show ends, but then it’s straight to the news, the 2nd plane has hit and you can’t take your eyes off the screen until four in the morning. I saw both buildings collapse live, and due to my between jobness, I spent the next 3 days basically watching the live feeds from CNN. Such as it went.
Many Australians were watching The West Wing that night… enjoying our fantasy America until the real world intruded. Strange and surreal, especially since I can still remember exactly how it went down 10 years later.
