Chrome yumminess

It says a lot about how much I like the Google Chrome browser that I can say ‘yumminess’ without too much embarrassment, also that I should spend a more-than-is-healthy-for-me amount of time salivating over the new Google Chrome Notebook. As a software developer I default to the position that a Chromebook is of no use to me, though I confess that, particularly with a VDI solution implemented for work, this will become less of a barrier. Besides which, I’m stubborn enough to believe that portable means secondary, and as an additional device it has an attraction.

Two applications that I already use with Google’s browser are Gmail and TweetDeck for Chrome; both use HTML5 notifications and both are preferable to their client application alternative. In moving to the browser they gained simple advantages that I’d never previously considered; integrated search for example. And I could learn to use Google Apps, though I admit in the past to having returned to Microsoft options rather than making the effort.

So where are we on this evolutionary path and is Google’s fundamentalist ‘everything in the cloud’ approach the right way? Or is Apple’s comparatively conservative ‘data in the iCloud’ more likely to succeed? And what gives with Microsoft’s Windows8 emphasis on HTML5 and Javascript? I digress; it’s the shiny objects that have my immediate interest, even though it’s hypothetical. I am on the outside looking in; iPads, Chromebooks, Snoozeberries, Everlasting Updates… such goodies are beyond my reach, and it's probably healthier that way.

Ranking behaviour

What a strange inconsistent lot we are. Whilst I don’t care for ranking the seriousness of a criminal offence, I am forced to this position with rumours that the Prime Minister wants to drop the 50% discount on sentencing altogether, as opposed to Kenneth Clarke and Nick Clegg who are prepared to exclude sexual offences from any discount. It seems Ed Miliband and various other apparatchiks, in another unholy alliance with our less salubrious members of the press, have made a good fist at trying to wreck this piece of progressive reform.

Yet I am unsure whether to praise Ken and Nick for trying to at least get a part measure accepted, or the Prime Minister in the unlikely hope that his stand was based on a refusal to indulge the often politically-motivated outrage generated. No single person is wholly good or wholly bad, and monstrous crimes should not blind us to the possibility that any one person can be rehabilitated. That it often fails is not the point; that it can succeed is our hope. What greater hope for an enlightened society?

The happiness of angels

I find no meaning in the happiness of angels. I know simply that this sky will last longer than I.

There was no rancour, only a gentle parting of the ways. Sometime in my early teenage years I came to the conclusion that I no longer believed in God, realising that I couldn’t remember the last time I had. That my outlook on life - some vague notion of leaving the world a better place - didn’t change as a result, might suggest it was never serious; certainly, I don’t think I’d ever thought of the life that came next. Of course my outlook did change, or rather the scope, but not until much later and at an age when such goals feel foolishly optimistic, conceited even.

At first I never gave it more than a passing thought; life would appear to have little purpose but there was plenty to keep me occupied. Age granted me time to think again, not through a fear of death, more a building curiosity on a question for which I suspected an unedifying answer. Thus I came to The Myth of Sisyphus & Other Essays.

Albert Camus; born in 1913 in Algeria, died in 1960 in Paris, a contemporary of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, a one-time communist - albeit during the 1930’s - who in criticising Soviet communism after the war managed to alienate his colleagues on the left, including Sartre who publicly denounced him. I confess, as with George Orwell, this only makes me like him more. Camus was a proponent of absurdism; a philosophy describing the conflict borne from our desire for meaning in a meaningless world, and discussing how we should react when conscious of this fate.

At least I think that’s it. I could hardly claim a complete understanding, yet for a work portraying the “philosophical suicide” of others, notably Kierkegaard of whom he suggests “an almost intentional mutilation of the soul”, The Myth of Sisyphus is a positive life-affirming read. Camus examines whether realisation should logically lead to suicide and answers with a defiant ‘No’, concluding such an act to be rejection. “There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn” he says, though I think he describes it better in one of the other essays:

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Solidarity

In 1980 I was thirteen, Leonid Brezhnev was in his 16th year as leader of the Communist party and therefore the USSR, the Soviet Bloc - having survived the Hungarian uprising - was a reality, it would be five years until Gorbachev’s leadership, nine until the fall of the Berlin wall. To someone my age, politics on a global stage was a duopoly; the free west versus the oppressed east. 1980 was the year a Polish electrician and trade union activist, Lech Walesa, became leader of the Soviet Bloc’s first independent trade union, Solidarity. It was my first indication that things could be different; albeit not without struggle, arrests, detention... martial law.

It’s why every time I see an avatar or comment tagged #Solidarity, I can only shake my head in disbelief. At least that’s one emotion; another was annoyance, this appropriation of the past to romanticise their own role as agents of change. But I settled on bemusement; this lack of self-awareness, I wonder if they’re prone to talk of an ‘elected dictatorship’? Some might be too young to remember, it could be mere coincidence yet, accidental or not, from my viewpoint they still look awfully silly.

Reason

I remind myself; every time I find something that isn’t working I’ve found something to do, as opposed to wondering about my choice of font. Since discovering that embedded comments are causing a problem - in that you can’t comment - I’ve switched to a pop-up window; it looks rubbish, but it works. Slightly more difficult will be unravelling the customised HTML, started when I knew next to nothing and continued through various stages of ignorance; it’s more ‘fun’ that way.

How long has it been broken? Possibly only a week, and since I don’t remember tinkering in that time I wonder if Blogger have done something to interfere with my ‘enhancements’. I should probably update to the latest designer, but that would mean starting over which... would give me something to do.

There are better goals. Absurdism may not be the easiest of subjects but I am determined to finish Camus, albeit not ‘finish with’ Camus since it’s well written - or should that be those bits I can understand are well written - as I dare say are the many bits I can’t. I’ve heard The Outsider is good too. And there’s a host of other stimulation to be found from people who I’ve never read. Small steps, something a little more accessible next; and I don’t say that to knock my intellectual capability, only that I’m a little slow.

Blue sky

It's stopped raining - I can even see patches of blue sky between the thick grey clouds. However, this is only a recent event - and since it has been raining for most of the day, it is my excuse for having spent the afternoon on iPlayer. I'm feeling a tad guilty, but I dare say I'll get over it. Dinner - if I can call what I did to the potatoes 'dinner' - has been served, I've the washing to do shortly and then I'll have the evening left in which to relax. Yet I'm in one of those odd moods where even though the chores are (almost) done I can't quite settle.

Four brilliant episodes of The Shadow Line later, I think what I need now is a light comedy, something to lift the heart a little.

The house of mirth

It's performance appraisal time and social convention requires you re-acquaint yourself with the company mantra:

Those who shout the loudest have the most to gain.

Of course that's not entirely fair, but then neither is making you fill in this form. Luckily you stumbled into contract work for several years and were able to opt out of such torture, resisting attempts of well-meaning managers to drag you back in; now however you’re a permanent participant of this divine comedy. The problem being that once an organisation reaches a certain size, the forms start to cater for the lowest common denominator, bloat with unnecessary detail and punish those who already have a strong work ethic. It's difficult to maintain a sense of individuality; especially when you reach the page containing a table of verbs and adjectives "you might want to use".

OK, so they're not that bad, but I am ambivalent. A formal appraisal can feel an admission of failure when continuous informal is the aim, where a well-run company has the least to gain and an ill-run company the most. It is at best an aide memoir for good management, not a requirement.