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<b>me:</b> (about a new acquaintance) he writes open source software. he is spanish. he dislikes capitalists. <b>q:</b> (unimpressed) <b>me:</b> i have a file on everyone, you know. <b>q:</b> you mean you use google. <b>me:</b> well i'd be a fool to keep them locally, wouldn't i? |
They’ve revamped the bit of the Sunday Times I wrote my column inside (for nearly four years!), and there’s no more room for me in the new, smaller section. So I’m away.
Perhaps I should be more worried than I am – only yesterday we were talking about our paycheque-to-mouth existence around here. But truthfully, I’m relieved. We’ve parted on good terms, so I think I’ll still be writing features for the paper. And although weekly column did wonders for my discipline, it also made me soooo lazy. You get very spoilt when you can pay your rent one five-hundred word piece at a time.
Before I got the Virtual Life gig, I presented a TV show, and before that I was producing a TV series, and before that I helped start an ISP, and before that I manhandled a baby magazine to death, and before that I was doing a one-man show, and before that I was in a bedsit in London, staring at the stains on the ceiling. Each time I had to scare myself into trying the next job, like a series of squeaking bunny-hops. I have no ambition. I just look over my shoulder a lot.
And I was, as I think I’ve mentioned, getting a bit peeved with the writing-about-others-excitement instead of wreaking-excitement-on-others. I’ve been toying with new things for four years now, but haven’t really taken any of them seriously. Now I get to look serious again.
gulp
(I’m still in the Irish Times though. This Friday, if you can evade their subscription guards, I ponder on why Perl people drink so much and why everyone in Python land has a funny European accent. It’s true!)
Judith Milhon, or as everybody (like me) who never met her knew her, St. Jude, died, they say. It could just be a rumour: cypherpunks (which she named) hasn’t mentioned it, I haven’t heard anything on the cracker mailing lists either. Death travels slowly online. People are hesitant to believe.
“My own definition of hacking is the clever circumvention of imposed limits, whether imposed by your government, your own skills or the laws of physics.”