Daughter on the Edge

That was an interesting year, 2001. Only it was the next one that blew everything away. So forget 9/11.

Dark night over the Carpathians, looking down onto the the white snow covered place. Safe in our business-class dinner world. Wondering, and sure that all was good down below. 

More fool you.

At the edge of the world, with feeble contact via that machine. We were connected in 2002, so why weren't they? Why did I have to leave that device outside just to get a that txt? That Txt! 

Five words that hope for you, were a throw away for the sender.

 So much for fucking hope.

Back to the city on the lake. Back via the lake front. 

Looking out the taxi window at how grand it was. Looking out at how better it was. Looking out at the grayness of the snow covered mountains that suddenly looked do dull.

And you kept it up for nine months.

Nine months! 

Until the day it did not happen on that Dark Days, Clear Nights time.

A Day in Time

Image via WikipediaIf they are right or wrong I really don't care as one day we will break the speed of light barrier and we will hit the stars.

Ever upwards and onwards is the human way. Life is pre-programmed to survive:

Moving down, layer by layer through the circles of Dante's biological hell, you'll discover that the Valley isn't one system of life but dozens, stacked and stratified, as distinct from one another as the deep-sea zones of earth. Some of them are lively, raucous, lit by soft constellations of fungal lanterns and bioluminescent critters. Other layers are silent as library cloisters, where one instant of clumsiness can bring death from a hundred lurking sources.

from Queen of the Iron Sands by Scott Lynch

see Speed of Light

Box Fire Nights

They come, whirling up from the Southern Ocean, round and round to eventually punch the East Coast with a ten degree tempreture drop, and the famous understated 'Southerly Change'.

Just when you thought spring had arrived.

More fool you, or rather more fuel you. It'a back to heating time. Back to the box fire. Come on. Light it up or you'll freeze when the Southerly races through.

Back to the box. The fire box of heat.

Netflex and the Death of DVD's

You as I was saying that this blog was going to get more personal and along comes this analysis for the Netflix split by Gizmodo. Now the really interesting point Brian Barrett, the author of the post makes in summing up is:

Or maybe we spend the next decade using Qwikster as a series of data points, watching DVD vital signs wane until eventually the format flatlines.

This is the logical conclusion to this business of "shiny little frisbees".

The only people who don't know the shiny frisbee market is over are the main film companies. They will hang on like grim death, suing their customers just like the record companies until there are none left.

As for the publishing industry....

see Why Netflix Just Cut Itself in Half

Moving on or Backwards To Go

I have finally got around to updating the second page on this blog, Early Edge Files. They are a series of blog posts written when I first came to New Zealand in 2004 and 2005.

These posts are of course of a much more personal nature than the new related 'link' posts that have characterised the "Back to The Edge' blog.

The latest post 'Fox Bat Central' prodded me to complete the second page. It's content may well become the norm on this blog.

Fox Bat Central

You stand on Central platform at the end of yet another 110 call day. Looking over to the skyline to where the mountains lie.

The creatures flap in the twilight that's shot through with deep, dark blue and silver as dusk hits the tracks.

As you wait for the train.

They fly so high. They endlessly wheel and dive.

You believe they are roosting birds.

Huh!

They are giant Fox Bats, alive in Sydney's evening darkening sky.

They show the way it was, little knowing that it would soon be over and their Garden Island home would be no more.

MKR and Scripted Remarks

In the interests of a peaceful home front existence I have been watching and following the Australian cooking competition My Kitchen Rules.

Leaving aside my consternation with the complete Anglo Saxon obsession with cooking TV shows and programs, an obsession that most Europeans find bewildering, it never ceases to amaze me just how scripted the contestant's off stage (sorry off kitchen) remarks can be.

• "If we don't cook better than (whoever), then will get knocked out" - remarks made in a knock out cook out.
• "I am really nervous about the next stage of the competition" - another remark made in the knock out part of the competition.
• "You must produce your best plates yet! Otherwise you will be eliminated! - remark by one of the judges in the knock part of the competition.

Once you focus on these off kitchen remarks it becomes increasingly obvious that they were all written by the show's script writers.

Another example of the way popular so-called reality shows are dumbed down to eliminate all spontaneity and leave nothing to chance.

Suez Shipping Indicator

"The average increase in the total weight of cargo passing through the canal was 5.7% in the three months to July, down from 9.5% in December. Making a simple forecast based on the past few months' data suggests that world GDP will fall from 3.8% in the first quarter to 3.3% in the second quarter"

from The Economist Daily Charts

Which reminded me that it was a while since I had looked at the Baltic Exchange Index.

So here it is, and it not not reflecting the same trend.

Watch these charts, as they say.