Listening to: A very quiet office.

Very
amusing:

Listening to: Only This Moment - Röyksopp

Wesley Clark in the Washington
Post

In the old, familiar fashion, mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq have mobilized increasing
public doubts about the war. More than half the American people now believe that the
invasion of Iraq was a mistake. They’re right. But it would also be a mistake to pull
out now, or to start pulling out or to set a date certain for pulling out. Instead
we need a strategy to create a stable, democratizing and peaceful state in Iraq –
a strategy the administration has failed to develop and articulate.

From the outset of the U.S. post-invasion efforts, we needed a three-pronged strategy:
diplomatic, political and military. Iraq sits geographically on the fault line between
Shiite and Sunni Islam; for the mission to succeed we will have to be the catalyst
for regional cooperation, not regional conflict.

Unfortunately, the administration didn’t see the need for a diplomatic track, and
its scattershot diplomacy in the region — threats, grandiose pronouncements and truncated
communications — has been ill-advised and counterproductive. The U.S. diplomatic
failure has magnified the difficulties facing the political and military elements
of strategy by contributing to the increasing infiltration of jihadists and the surprising
resiliency of the insurgency.

Listening to: Hate It Or Love It - The Game

The latest missive from
Robert X. Cringely has a bunch of interesting things to say about Google (and MS and
Apple for that matter), but I thought the most interesting thought was a quote from
one of the Paypal founders:

Not long ago, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin explained to me that rapid development
is an important key to market dominance.

“What you want to do,” he said, “is listen to your customers and bring out every two
weeks improved versions that would each take your competitor two months to complete.
That’s when you are on a rocket — they can’t keep up so they can’t compete. They
lose hope and pretty soon you have the market pretty much to yourself.”

Listening to: No More Fun And Games - The Game

What I thought was an amusing coincidence to open a birthday invite turns out to be true.

Listening to: Dangerzone (Featuring Raggadon) - Confucious & Mysterious D

The LiftPort team have completed their one mile test
ribbon (yup, that’s 1 mile in length).

The ribbon consuruction was an adventure in itself. It was a lot of
hard work and a lot of tedious details but we got it done. 60 spools of ribbon, 24
cans of aviation orange paint, 3 completely ruined leather gloves, 9 feet of pvc pipe
and about 20 hours of walking, cranking, painting and gluing.

Listening to: Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)(Featuring Jay-Z) - Kanye West

The BBC is obviously taking
advantage of being public funded to really push the ways in which content can
be distributed (start paying attention TVNZ):

A simulcast of BBC One or BBC Two, letting UK viewers see programmes on the web at
the same time as they go out on TV, is being planned.

The BBC received a “wake-up call” about the demand for new technology in March when
the first episode of the new Doctor Who was leaked on to the internet, she said.

A BBC spokesman said the corporation was aiming to simulcast a channel permanently
but would restrict it to UK viewers only.

Listening to: not too sure… this was computer generated.

mephisto
jones in Good as Gold

>

Originally uploaded by flash5.>

Mephisto Jones has finally filled the
back wall of Good as Gold… it looks great.

Listening to: What If - Coldplay

I have upgraded (problematically… in that the conversion tool spat the dummy) to
dasBlog 1.8.5… I don’t expect a change in service, but let me know if things
are playing up.

Oh! And if anyone knows where I can get some good dasBlog themes gimme a yell.

Listening to: not too sure… this was computer generated.

Weta
Visit

Originally uploaded by flash5.>

This is the photo taken from the Capital Times story
of the visit
to Weta.

Listening to: The office banter

For my own notes: Welcome
to the Windows SDK