travail en cours

Why did I tell Gmail to direct Fairfax updates straight into the Spam-can? Only now do I realise it’s 3 weeks to the City-to-Surf. I lost track of time (as per usual), so now I really have to start making a last minute effort to get ready.

Things to do :

• Look up the course, start times and areas.
• Update Nike Running App on the iPhone. The whole thing has been buggy as hell.
• Go running. (When I get over this cold.)
• Maybe buy some of those fancy running pants and other performance enhancing paraphernalia (such as sweat bands and Sports drinks with electrolytes).
• Go to the doctor and get a prescription for Ventolin and Seretide.
• Check Race Guidelines to see if Segways are permitted.
• Find Segway Rentals and compare daily or hourly rates.*

and most importantly-

• Make an absolutely awesome C2S Playlist! I imagine It will take me around 3 hours? So 3 hours of motivational muzak is a must.

* For those who have a fascination with ironic (nonetheless tragic) deaths, the untimely demise of Jimi Heseldon (Segway Company Owner not Inventor) is one to read.

I also found some Vimeo news and important user updates from Skype recently - (My credit is going to expire?!) nestled amongst the Viagara and penis enlargement advertisements.

It’s a sad life when you realise you’re searching through your Junkmail for meaningful correspondence.  

It’s a wondrous age. I count my blessings to be living in a time of power-steering, major advances in psychiatry and neuroscience, zero-calorie soft drink and the imminent life-changing promise of cloud-computing. (Although I would be happy to give that all up to be jetting about in a Vespa, my hair pinned up in a perfectly stiff and intact beehive, sans-helmet in 1960s Paris, even if I would be shifting uncomfortably on the seat from a primitively-size sanitary pad). But how is that on an ordinary day I can experience such modern-day marvels like going to a restaurant bathroom and pressing a button to change the toilet seat cover or witness a pre-speech infant swipe a television screen thinking that it would change the channel like a touch-screen iPad and still have the problem of a permanently sticky mouse and trackpad?! You would think some enterprising programmer/inventor/tinkerer with a penchant for consuming sweet snacks while browsing gaming forums would have put his/her brilliant mind to the question of how to keep these surfaces ‘sugar-free’. 

Let’s take inspiration from nature - mice groom themselves. (Although some mice with PTSD get a bit OCD about it and it’s quite heartbreaking to see them lick themselves bald.) Why can’t my computer mouse be self-cleaning? Why can’t my trackpad have a little auto-wiper to sweep away the crumbs, miscellaneous debris and the icing-powder from my kourambiedes?

Now that’s an engineering problem worth solving. Consider it a ‘green’ solution in the quest to curb climate change. Using up a steady supply of moist towelettes is getting to my eco-conscience. But not enough to stop me eating cake and blogging simultaneously.

• Manhattan (Annie Hall et. al. of Woody Allen)
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s
• Taxi Driver
• 25th hour (Son of Sam et. al. Spike Lee* joints )
• Dog Day Afternoon (Pierre Huyghe version too)
• I Shot Andy Warhol
• Basquiat
• The Apartment (and Wilder’s Seven-Year Itch which doesn’t get much of a scratch)
• The Muppets Take Manhattan

and the “put-on-the-Quikflix-queue”

• Wall Street
• Working Girl
• Do the Right Thing*
• The Wackness
• Bella
• Escape From New York