Faith, Hope & Chariot

I just completed my largest ever purchase on the Web to date. A car. About twenty grands worth. This new record undeniably puts my previous record purchase a tad in the shade - a mobile phone worth £200 and before that a bunch of books from Amazon.

It wasn't entirely end to end on the Web, there have been a couple of phone calls to confirm delivery specifics but, pretty much, it's been purchased over browers and emails over the last fortnight or so. Of course the money didn't actually change hands - apart from the deposit - until the wheels actually turned up so I'm not saying I threw myself completely at the mercy of some TCP/IP bandits risking all, but you know what I mean. Next up, a Learjet.

Phenomenally Opportunistic Photography

For the last couple of months I've had a camera-phone and one of the things you notice when you carry a camera about with you wherever you go, is how easy it is to capture and share insignificant everyday moments that previously would have passed by without a second thought.

Like how in this past week I've been struck by some truly amazing and beautiful early morning sunrises (as has Doc Searls this week) on my commute to the office and I've been able to grab snapshots of them on the spot. Sunrises (or sunsets) change dramatically from second to second, and just when you think they couldn't get any more beautiful, they prove you wrong and contine to paint the sky in colours and shades so profoundly attractive, they leave you momentarily with a deep sense of jaw dropping awe. And then they're gone.

I think that there's something about large natural phenomena like sunrises, earthquakes, the aurora borealis and other astrological wonders, that connects and speaks directly to our primeval strands of spiritual DNA. Last year we had a medium-ish earthquake in the UK which, some seventy miles from its epicentre, shook our house sufficiently to awake us from our sleep in the middle of the night. In the moments immediately following, I had no idea what had happened but I instinctively knew that, whatever it was, it was a very major event. A few more moments later I was able to rationalise it down to the likelihood of being an earthquake after discounting other possibilties like a plane crash or bomb.

Perhaps it's the sense of extreme scale and enormity of it all, not to mention to the complete absence of power or control over our world - (actually more like sense of total powerless-ness), whether it be as a result of an earthquake or a peachy-pink sunrise, that makes the hair stand up on the back of the neck, like remnants of long since numbed and suppressed feelings of fear that our cave dwelling ancestors would have felt upon experiencing the same natural phenomena.

Anyway, having a camera-phone means that these emotions can be captured and re-contextualised just like I've done here. Progress. Supposedly.

Anti-Socially Yours

My FOAF profile is FUBAR for some reason beyond the ability of my pea sized brain to envelope. (It's there if I look for it using FTP but not HTTP??!!?)

Plus, my Friendster network is dusty. My LinkedIn profile is immature but growing up fast.

So, if you know me then let me know and I'll invite you to join or vice versa. The test I've developed for determining whether or not you 'know' me is; we are both at a random convention somewhere on the planet, Steak Knife Expo 2003 or something interesting like that, and we each know that we are both attending the conference. If we feel the desire, need, obligation to seek each other out at said conference then I think its reasonable to say that we can safely articulate our relationship in the 'knowing' sense.