On spotting a pattern

Readers may — should — be aware of PostSecret, a kind of anonymous clearinghouse for secrets that people write on postcards and send to Frank, who posts (a selection of) them on the web. (To be clear: people post their own secrets, it's not for outing your friends or even enemies.) I read the site every Sunday (it updates once a week), and am always moved by at least one of the secrets.

For a marvellous time, there was a PostSecret iPhone app too, which did much the same thing — but without Frank's intervention, so people could and did post secrets at any time of the day or night. Since I liked the website so much, I bought and regularly read the app too.

The app had several effects, the one relevant to this story was that it increased by several orders of magnitude the number of secrets being published. This sudden superabundance made it really easy to spot patterns and commonalities. One pattern which I noticed early on, and which fascinated me, was this:

My dead [person I was very close to] spoke to me and saved my life.

Some examples (quoting from memory, obviously; the sense is correct even if the words may be misremembered):

I heard my dead father whistling in the kitchen like he used to do, so I went down to see. The stove was on fire.

The light was green but my daddy told me to stop the car, so I did. As I stepped on the brakes, a car ran through the red light in front of me. My secret: my daddy died three years ago.

My best friend died in a car accident n* years ago. I was driving across a highway bridge with my kids, when I heard her voice from the back seat telling me to change lanes. I did, and a truck blew out a tire and veered across the highway to crash into the barrier right where we had been. It would have killed us all.

Had this just been one secret of a single person, I'd have written it off as a hallucination or the babbling of an idiot. But there were hundreds of these! There was at least one every week!

I was and remain fascinated by these stories. I'd love to know what happened to these people: what exactly did they experience?

Am I saying that the dead remain on earth and communicate with us? No.

Am I saying that something inexplicable and very interesting happened to these people, which we would do well to study? Hell yes.

The app was taken down recently in an unfortunate victory of arseholism over decency. A minority of users were posting porn and/or abusive and insulting pictorial comments, taking advantage of the fact that the posting process was automated and instantaneous. A self-organizing committee of volunteers emerged who tried to dam the flood, but they were overwhelmed by the quantity of garbage that had to be found and deleted. Ah well.

* Can't remember how many years, it doesn't matter to the story.

About last year

Things I figured out/learned/noticed in 2008 (in no particular order).

1. Always carry a notebook and a pencil, even if you are also carrying a laptop.


2. Ten years after telling myself "You're too old to lie to yourself and the world" I am still doing so.


3. Crossing the Atlantic seems more unpleasant and less interesting each time I do it.


4. Nearly everyone else in the world is as lonely and as hungry for contact as you are.


5. Everyone responds positively to a smile and a friendly word.


6. A little kindness goes a long way.


7. The surest way to become happy is by making someone else happy.


8. I need to say "no" more often.


9. I need to say a clear and definite "yes" more often too.


10. I need to take my responsibilities more seriously.


11. I need to take myself less seriously.


12. Some problems do not go away if you ignore them.


13. Most problems are far less drastic than they first seem.


14. Cooking makes me happy.


15. I am probably not going to die any time soon, so I should start thinking about how the next few decades will look.


16. My desire to help you does not mean that you desire to be helped, or even that you are willing to admit that you might need help.


17. People who would be shocked or disturbed to hear the truth would abandon you sooner or later anyway, so better tell them right now and get it over with.


18. My default personality, the Udge who blogs here, is only one of many possible Me's.


19. My "minority personalities" have skills and positive qualities that my default personality cannot or will not access; but they can express these attributes in my real life.


20. Being groomed and then slept on by a cat is somehow very comforting.


21. There's much more to life than money, but having no money sucks.

Memoir

roadside2
Originally uploaded by udge

A meme, courtesy of Zhoen: Six word memoir, with photo. Tag as appropriate.

Learning to trust the unseen path.


I tag ... you. Yes, you at the back, I saw you trying to hide.

On the difference between logic and clear thinking

Being a little teaser for the weekend.

Permit me to draw to your attention a marvellous CD called trees outside the academy by thurston (Moore of Sonic Youth). It's largely acoustic and quite melodic (in contrast to the frequently harsh electric noisery of SY); the songs are all interesting, and some are actually quite beautiful. Try it, you might like it.

A simple but infuriatingly tricky logic-puzzle meme is going around the Internets. Here's the short version courtesy of xkcd:

A group of people with assorted eye colors live on an island. They are all perfect logicians -- if a conclusion can be logically deduced, they will do it instantly. No one knows the color of their eyes. Every night at midnight, a ferry stops at the island. If anyone has figured out the color of their own eyes, they [must] leave the island that midnight. Everyone can see everyone else at all times and keeps a count of the number of people they see with each eye color (excluding themselves), but they cannot otherwise communicate. Everyone on the island knows all the rules in this paragraph.

On this island there are 100 blue-eyed people, 100 brown-eyed people, and the Guru (she happens to have green eyes). So any given blue-eyed person can see 100 people with brown eyes and 99 people with blue eyes (and one with green), but that does not tell him his own eye color; as far as he knows the totals could be 101 brown and 99 blue. Or 100 brown, 99 blue, and he could have red eyes.

The Guru is allowed to speak once (let's say at noon), on one day in all their endless years on the island. Standing before the islanders, she says the following:

"I can see someone who has blue eyes."

Who leaves the island, and on what night?

The solution proposed by xkcd is here, and for what it's worth I think it is wrong because although his logic is correct, his solution does not address the question as it is stated in the problem. Spoiler warning: highlight the blank below this to read.

The logic depends on the number of blue-eyeds that can be seen by any given person. Let the number of blue-eyeds visible to a brown-eyed be N; the number visible to a blue-eyed is M (equal to N-1, because they cannot see themselves). This difference is the crux of the solution.

If I am the only blue-eye(N=1), then for me M=0. Therefore I must be the single blue-eye whom the Guru saw, and must leave immediately on day zero (N-1).

If there were only two people on the island, one blue-eyed person and one brown-eyed (also N=1), the same thing would happen: The blue-eyed would see the brown-eyed and realize that their own eyes must be blue, and leave immediately on day zero (N-1).

What if there were only two people on the island, both blue-eyed (but neither knows his or her own colour)? N=2. In this case they would look at each other and think, "s/he over there is the person the Guru meant" and not leave. Next day, seeing that the other person had not left, they would both think "s/he did not leave, meaning that s/he thinks that I am the person the Guru meant, therefore I have blue eyes." Both would leave on day one (N-1).

If there were four people on the island, split two and two (N=2), the situation is more complex but not different. The browns see two blues; each blue sees only one, thinks "s/he was seen by the Guru" and so remains. On day one, each blue still sees a blue and therefore thinks "aha, s/he thinks that the Guru meant me", knows that s/he is blue-eyed, so both blues will leave. Meanwhile, what are the browns thinking? On the morning of day one, they see two blues leave, know that they must have seen only one other, and know therefore that their own eyes are not blue.

The solution is thus: Given that I see M blue-eyed people, wait to see what happens M-1 days after the Guru spoke. If the blue-eyeds leave on day M-1, then my eyes must be brown. If I can still see blue-eyeds on day M, then my eyes are blue too and I will leave, with the others, on the next day.

However: the problem states that anyone arriving at knowledge of his or her eye colour must leave the island, not that persons discovering themselves to be blue-eyed must leave. The true answer is that almost everyone will leave, except those having a colour that occurred exactly once in the original population.

What happens next is a repeat of the blue-eyed scenario: the not-blues look around and see at least one other eye colour. Say that there are six greens, of which I see M examples. if they leave on day M-1, then my eyes are not green. I may remain on the island—for now—because I still do not know my eye colour, just that it is neither blue nor green. If they are still present, then my eyes too are green and we must all leave.

Fellow travellers

Being a belated entry in yesterday's Sunday Scribblings blogmemethingy, prompted by Pacian's utterly brilliant story.

On a longish subway journey recently, I sat across the aisle from a deaf-mute pair who were holding an animated conversation in sign language. Being the irrepressibly curious person that I am, I watched them for most of the journey (covertly, being the unalterably polite and shy person that I am).

I found their conversation quite fascinating to watch, even as I had no idea what it was about. If I had to guess, I would say that they were a relatively fresh pair and were discussing mutual friends; but who knows?

Several things in particular interested me. Firstly, the deaf are not silent! Both of them moved their lips frequently while speaking (i.e. gesturing) and often made odd, quiet little vocalizations, not unlike a baby's first attempts at speech, while doing so.

Secondly, I was astonished to see that they did not actually watch each other's hands while communicating, as I had expected. They maintained eye contact almost all of the time, with their hands in their laps fluttering like birds, well out of their field of view. I'm trying it right now, looking up above the monitor while I type, seeing how well I can judge what my fingers do on the keyboard. It works better than I thought: I can't see the details of what happens, obviously, but the shape of what my fingers are doing is quite clear.

Still: I was very surprised. I would love to know how they understood each other. Did they get the content of their conversation from lipreading and micro-expressions, using the gestures as almost subconscious reinforcement? A mystery.

Thirdly, I was amused to note a difference in conversational style just as profound as between the voices of speaking persons. His gestures were clipped, short, abrupt, inwardly-directed, linear; hers were soft, flowing, opening, outwards-directed, circular.

I was fascinated and curious, and had we been seated comfortably in a train rather than packed like sardines into a rattling subway car, I would have found a way to strike up a conversation—or would at least have attempted it.

Sans titre

From a recent (outgoing) e-mail:

The translation is on hold for a week, as the competition creeps towards the submission date.

Re database: I can't complain, the translation is saving my bacon this year. The truth is that my own database is a failed product, if it weren't the child of five years effort I'd close it down and move on.

Not sure how feel about having written that.

Cf. Ecclesiastes 2:11.

In more cheerful news there's a fresh meme going around: the first three commenters to sign up for the meme here and post the same promise on their blogs will receive a smallish present-thingy from me at some point during the next 366 (leap year!) days. Note that this will require informing me of your real-world identity and address, so those intent on secrecy and anonymity should probably refrain from joining in. [Updated: there have already been three volunteers, but hey: if you really really want to play, go ahead and sign up anyway.]

Seven down, twenty-three to go.

That book meme again

Pronoia tagged me for a book meme! It's the second time around for this one, I did it in September 2005, but that was two years ago. Let's see what has changed if anything (I'm trying not to read or remember what I wrote then.)

Total number of books owned

I have about eight hundred books here in Stuttgart, plus a hundred or so in Toronto, plus some four hundred still in an attic in East London.

(This is up about fifty in the last two years, which is not very much at all: barely two books a month, after years when I'd buy two per week. I re-discovered the joy of lending libraries since then, and have so been saving money. These days I only buy books that I expect to re-read several times.)

Last book bought

Früheste deutsche Lieddichtung Literally "earliest German song-poetry," a collection of medieval song texts from the 12th century, in Mittelhochdeutsch and modern German on opposite pages. Our buses and subway carry short poems interspersed among the ads; one that caught my eye recently is quoted in this book. I was so taken with the poem, and pleased with myself for being able to read it, that I noted the book's title and tracked down a copy.

Last book read

The last book I finished was Beowulf; I'm currently reading "Inspektor Jury sucht den Kennington Smaragd" by Martha Grimes, and Paul Cartledge's "Thermopylae, the battle that changed the world" which I wrote about in November. So far, it's living up to the reviews: a fascinating tale well told. It would be worth a post, one of these days, to examine why Thermopylae is so important to me (actually, that post makes a pretty good start at it).

Five books that mean a lot to you

Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Philip Larkin, Collected Poems

J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

George Orwell, the four volumes of his Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters. What? <sings>It's my blog and I'll cheat if I want to.</sings>


And now, the best part: where I get to annoy some of you immensely. I tag Jean, Pacian, Rob, Antonia and Philip. [Updated] well, since Antonia is away for a while, let's add the Lioness to the party.

Miscellany, Saturday edition

Listening to Don Giovanni, the soundtrack to the Joseph Losey film. This is one of my many favourite operas, possibly my most favouritest after Wagner. I've heard it many dozens of times and seen it performed live twice, and it never gets stale. The Don is such a wonderful character (well: an extremely nasty, vicious bastard, but you know what I mean); Leporello is the perfect obsequious servant, a worm who dreams of turning; and oh, that final scene with the statue!

Many years ago, I saw a remarkable production in which the Don and Leporello were sung by a pair of identical twins, Herbert and Eugene Perry. They played their roles as the opposite of a split personality: One soul in two bodies. I found it a fascinating, revelatory production (though many disagreed), one of the few cleverclogs-director-productions of any opera which transcended the director's ego to achieve something truly new.

Leporello and the Don are (in any production of the opera) entwined in a relationship of almost incestuous closeness, picking the lice from each other's souls (as Vladimir would have it). Like some married couples, they would be glad to be rid of each other but neither wishes to take the first step. Leporello claims to be appalled by the Don's cruel immorality, but enjoys a comfortable life with him; Giovanni is irritated by Leporello's moralizing, but knows he would never find another servant so willing. They have come to need each other.

Finished translating the second item, which was a set of Powerpoint slides about the institution where Princess is shortly to exhibit some new works, for the annual meeting of its directors and sponsors. Should anyone ever ask you to translate Powerpoint slides, learn from my experience: It is nearly impossible to do this on your own, unless the Powerpointer is the kind of idiot who writes out his entire speech line-for-line onto zig hundred slides. Powerpoint which has been done properly, i.e. as a non-distracting adjunct to a speech, is utterly meaningless on its own! Of roughly forty bullet points, some of which were single words, I guessed three-quarters wrongly because I'd misunderstood the context.

I am now wondering how to charge for this part of the job. Normally translation is charged per word, but done by the sentence or even paragraph (i.e. in semantic units); one seldom has to look up a word in the original language because the context usually makes its meaning clear. In Powerpoint, nobody can hear you scream there is no context—it's given by the speech that you (translator) can't hear. I think I shall treat each bullet point as a sentence, and take the average sentence length from the first document to arrive at a working length and thus at the price.

A new meme is making the rounds. Courtesy of the Little Professor, I give you the Library Meme. It's a very simple one, just a single question: which books do you presently have out on loan from the library?

I've borrowed four books:

• Elizabeth George, Well schooled in murder
• Martha Grimes, Inspektor Jury sucht den Kennington Smaragd
• Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Oskar und die Dame in Rosa
• Robert Schneider, Schlafes Bruder

and reserved another:

• Alberto Moravia, Die Verachtung

There, wasn't that just fascinating? Tagged you, you're it.

Wikimeme

Because I'm too tired and lazy to write a proper blogthingy tonight (borrowed with thanks from Zhoen and Pacian):

1. Go to wikipedia and type in your birthday, month and day only.
OK, done that.

2. List events that occurred on that day that interest you.
1099 - the siege of Jerusalem (First Crusade) begins.
1654 - Louis XIV is crowned King of France.
1800 - David Thompson reaches the mouth of the Saskatchewan River in Manitoba.
1893 - Gandhi's first act of civil disobedience.
1982 - Priscilla Presley opens Graceland to the public; the bathroom where Elvis Presley died five years earlier is kept off-limits.

3. List a few birthdays.
1778 - Beau Brummell, English fashion leader
1879 - Knud Rasmussen, Greenland-born explorer
1940 - Tom Jones, Welsh singer
1958 - Prince, American musician
1981 - Anna Kournikova, Russian tennis player

4. List a few deaths.
1329 - Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland
1866 - Chief Seattle, Native American leader
1954 - Alan Turing, British mathematician and computer scientist
1970 - E. M. Forster, English author
1980 - Henry Miller, American writer

5. List a holiday or observance. (if any)
Roman Empire - first day of the Vestalia.
The feast days of Saints Godoald, Fortunatus, Maximinus, Procopius, Robert, Servatius and Wulstan, not to mention the Blessed Willibald.

Wonderful

Warning: readers still in the climatic zone called "winter" may wish to avert their eyes from this post.

It's 22°C here in Stuttgart, the sun is shining and the sky is blue. I had lunch with G and U at an utterly crappy Biergarten-type-restaurant with an open-air terrace on the Killesberg, which was almost redeemed by its magnificent view down the Neckar valley towards Esslingen. I decided after lunch that it was too nice a day to return to work straight away, so I walked down the hill through the Hohenpark to the Löwentor subway station; then decided that it was still too nice a day to return to work, so I walked on through the Rosensteinpark to the Mineralbäder subway station, and there boarded a train home. Three kilometres and a hundred vertical metres of hillside, or an hour of sun, fresh air, Spring smells and birdsong.

Life is great.

In other news given a clear view of the horizon line and no clouds, Venus is visible for about 40 minutes after sundown, directly above the point where the sun set. Go have a look. It's easy to tell whether you are seeing Venus or just a star: Venus is by far the brightest object in the sky, outshining everything but the moon, and is already visible while the sky is still bright blue.

In other, other news today's Dilbert is particularly brilliant.

In otherest news courtesy of the Late Edition, my Visual DNA:

Read my VisualDNA™     Get your own VisualDNA™

Sans titre

I've spent the day writing a new print formular for the database, with lots of optional goodness (if X then move these over there, else hide half of them and print Y instead). I think it's clean enough now to release it to Lou and Georgette for testing. Off to Munich tomorrow for a state-of-the-union meeting, to discuss what we might be able to change to persuade a possible new megaclient to sell it on to their 2000 clients.

Nothing else much is new. The crocuses and daffs are in bloom, the magnolias are budding out, the roses are putting out new bright red leaves.

Here's a meme borrowed from Pacian and Zhoen.

1. Do you like cheese?
Yes indeed, particularly strongly-flavoured cheeses like Münster, Passendaele or Parmesan; also runny soft blue cheeses like Stilton, Gorgonzola or St. Aygur.

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?
No, never had any inclination to try anything harder than marijuana, and that was a quarter-century ago. I just have no interest at all in that stuff.

3. Do you own a gun?
(a) No, I'm Canadian. (b) No, I live in Germany.

[Number Four is missing for some reason, P and Z both skipped it without comment.]

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments?
Not usually, but it depends whether I think I know what's wrong with me. I have a well-developed and active hypochondria gland.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
Bah. I live in the land of a thousand Wurst. Eating a hot dog here is like going to Ben and Jerry's and ordering vanilla.

7. What's your favourite Christmas song?
John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (war is over)"

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
I would most prefer to drink a good, strong, flavourful cappuccino; unfortunately this requires leaving the house, so I drink normal blended coffee.

9. Can you do push ups?
Yes, but not many. I have started on a program of toughening myself up before the Great Big Walk in May.

10. Is your bathroom clean?
Alas, no. I like having it clean, but cannot be bothered to make it so.

11. What's your favourite piece of jewelry?
The only jewelry that I wear is a watch that I bought twenty years ago. The nicest piece of jewelry I've seen recently was a one-off that a local jeweller had in her window display: pebbles from the beach, well-rounded grey stones with a thin white stripe in the middle of each, made into a collier. It was very beautiful in an odd Zen-like way: life is glorious if you look at it closely enough. My dream-woman would rather wear that than pearls.

Where's 12?
Across the street.

13. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex?
Well, if I had one it would be that my mouth has an "off" switch, and my ears don't.

14. Do you have friends?
To my eternal surprise and gratitude, yes.

15. Do you miss someone?
Many people in many places for many reasons.

16. Middle name?
Montmorency.

17. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment?
i. My back itches.
ii. I really should finish this and go to bed.
iii. It was a mistake to think that this would be an easy and quick blogpost.

[Number eighteen also disappeared without trace.]

19. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink:
i. Darjeeling tea
ii. Coffee
iii. Hot chocolate

20. Current worry?
Money, and the lack thereof.

21. Current hate?
Apathy and moral laziness.

22. Favourite place to be?
Sitting in the shade on a sunny day, with good companions and enough to eat, and a little more than enough to drink, for thirst is a dangerous thing.

23. How did you bring in the New Year?
Miserably, regrettably, foolishly, worryingly. Read about it here.

24. Where would you like to go?
Oh, where to begin? To Saigon in the Thirties, when it was the pearl of the Orient. To Los Angeles in the Seventies, when the Beach Boys were singing and gas was cheap. To Israel. To Antarctica. To Finland, Iceland and Russia (again). To Tokyo. To bed.

[Numbers 25 and 26 missing.]

27. Do you own slippers?
Yes, wonderful sheepskin mocassins. Snuggly warm and soft and fleecy. My toes are happy.

28. What shirt are you wearing?
Anthracite grey turtleneck.

29. Do you burn or tan?
I burn if I'm not careful during the first few days, after that I tan deeply.

30. Favourite colour?
Many, depends on the context. My favourite colour to look at is yellow, but I'd never wear it.

31. Would you be a pirate?
Sadly no, I'm allergic to parrotshit. A similar disability prevents me from entering politics.

32. What songs do you sing in the shower?
Raucous stuff, Iggy Pop ("Fall in love with me" or "Dum-dum boys") or Elton John ("Your sister can't twist" or "Crocodile rock") or Guns'n'Roses ("Paradise city").

[33 and 34 are missing too. If I had more time, energy and ambition I'd invent new questions to plug the gaps.]

35. What's in your pocket right now?
I just checked, and despite having a grand total of eight pockets in my clothes the answer is: absolutely nothing at all. Not even fluff or crumbs. (The answer would be different if I were blogging at work, but since I wasn't, and don't, you will never know.)

36. Last thing that made you laugh?
Wondermark.

37. Best bed sheets as a child?
Golden light-brown with black owls drawn in a large, loopy faux-Japanese-calligraphy style.

38. Worst injury you've ever had?
I've always kept my seat belt well fastened and my chair-back upright—and have been extremely lucky.

39. What is your biggest pet peeve?
To see wilful, wanton ignorance celebrated as being "authentic" or "genuine."

40. How many TVs do you have in your house?
One, which was last switched on in early February. On the other hand, there are five computer screens in this room.

41. Who is your loudest friend?
Ageing Yuppie, hands down over my ears.

42. Who is your most silent friend?
Z. One sentence an hour is about his speed, but they are always worth waiting for.

43. Does someone have a crush on you?
Not that I'm aware of. Wear a rosette please, or wave a little sign.

44. Do you wish on shooting stars?
No, because I never think to do so quickly enough. By the time I've said "Oh, look, there's a shooting star. Boy, it's moving fast, it must be going dozens of times the speed of sound, I wonder why there's no sonic boom?" the star has long since burned out and gone.

45. What is your favourite book?
Sorry, can't do it. Ask me for a list of forty, I'll get back to you.

46. What is your favourite sweet?
Homemade shortbread cookies. I don't really like sweet foods that much (which is odd because I eat mountains of cookies).

47. What song do/did you want played at your wedding?
Meh. Whatever. I'm sure that I will have strong opinions about this on the day, but right now I couldn't be bothered.

48. What song do you want played at your funeral?
A fortune teller in Boston, who was described as "infallible" by the women who took me there, told me that I would live to be eighty-eight. By then I shall have compiled a full programme (available on CD and DVD at the church door, profits to Wikipedia).

49. What were you doing at 12 AM last night?
Probably already asleep; if not, reading St. Augustine's Confessions.

50. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up?
"Hey, the sun's shining, hooray! Get up, let's go!"

Five Things and a Video

I'm short of time again, so we'll play the now world-famous Five Things You Don't Know About Me meme. (The original specified that the things should be "interesting," well I can't promise that.)

1. I wash myself in the shower in an absolute and unvarying sequence, starting at the left armpit: upper torso, left arm, right arm, neck and shoulders, left leg, right leg, gonads, lower back, upper back, shampoo, face.

2. I hate shoes. I hate the way they look, I hate the way they feel, I hate the way my feet sweat in them in summer and freeze in them in winter; but more than that I hate buying them. When I find a pair of shoes that neither hurt my feet nor make small children cry and dogs bark, I wear them until they are worn through - and then buy another identical pair. My current favourites are Clarks, really dull and boring; I'm on my third fourth pair.

2a. I think that monotony ("really dull and boring") is grossly undervalued as an organizing principle. I strive for monotony in my database work: things should look like what they do, and two things that do the same task should have the same appearance.

3. I sometimes wonder whether my liking such a wide variety of music and literature isn't a sign of lack of taste (an inability to discriminate).

4. I deliberately don't do many things at home that I enjoy out-of-house. I shall never buy an espresso-maker, for instance, because that would spoil the special-event-ness of getting dressed and leaving the house to have a cappuccino; although I love Bratkartoffeln, I've never tried to make them.

5. I sometimes feel that I'm the biggest fraud on earth, and am about to be justly exposed to the world's ridicule.

And now, the video One of the oddest German traditions at New Year is watching a particular short film on TV. It's a classic, every good German knows every word of it by heart; every station broadcasts it at least once today, and every good German will watch it at least once today.

What's odd about that, you might ask? Well, two things. First, the film is in English and is broadcast without dubbing or subtitles, but even people who don't speak English (e.g. G's parents) love the film and watch it every year. Secondly, although the film was made from an English script and features English actors, no English person of my acquaintance has ever heard of it!

Without further ado, "The 90th birthday party, or Dinner for one."

Happy New Year, my dears.

Six books

[I've left it too late to write a real post, but don't want to break my posting-every-day streak, so you get another emergency post.]

A meme, courtesy of going to pieces, found while perusing the Randomizer.

Take six books at random from your bookshelf. (In the original form, it was as simple as that. I found myself calculating which book was interesting at which page depth, so modified it to "six unread books" to regain randomness. Library books count.)

Book #1: first sentence.
Rosecliffe Park Drive runs its entire short length in a curve, along the edge of a rather scenic portion of the Don Valley.
M.G. Vassanji, No new land

Book #2: last sentence on page fifty.
We lived on snow; it took the place of bread.
Elie Wiesel, Night

Book #3: second sentence on page 100.
Like any religious rite, it represented a movement from isolated sorrow to communal sharing, but for the first time the inner life was involved in the religious life of the polis.
Karen Armstrong, A short history of myth

Book #4: third sentence on page 150.
The market disciples ignore the admonition of their idol, Adam Smith, that high wages are essential to growth and prosperity.
John Ralston Saul, The unconscious civilization

Book #5: next to last sentence on page 250.
We have not room in the British Museum to give a loose rein to realism in the matter of accessories, but each animal or bird in the collection is so stuffed as to make it look as much alive as the stuffer can make it - even to the insertion of glass eyes.
Samuel Butler, Alps and sanctuaries of Piedmont and Canton Ticino

Book #6: final sentence of the book.
But we can say that narrative, after facing every conceivable challenge in this century, remains central to our existence, our companion, forever puzzling, forever irreplaceable.
Robert Fulford, The triumph of the narrative

Thank your first commenter day

According to Sass, yesterday was "Thank your first commenter day." I missed that somehow, so I'll make up for it now.

My first comment came eight minutes after I posted my very first piece on my brand-new blog (not that I saw it arrive, I was by then already on the way to work). TheLearner bid me welcome, in the first and far from last example of the kindness of strangers that is the Blogosphere. (There is still a Blogger with the screen name "TheLearner," but it's not my commenter: he was an American, the current Learner is from Madras, India.)

As I said previously, the immediate response of comments from all around the world is a major part of the pleasure that I get from blogging. Blogging isn't about writing, it's about community: wondering why Dale hasn't written in a week, or being pleased to see that Jean has posted again, or watching Zhoen roll unstoppably towards the 50,000-words mark, or commiserating with Philip over his stolen laptop (ah well) and the not-backed-up photos of his kids that were on it (disaster), or keeping an eye on Marzipan and Mermaid Girl as they grow up.

So, in the spirit of, er, yesterday: wherever you are, dear ex-Learner, thank you very much for your comment.

In other news my mother is back home from the hospital, weary and sore but basically OK. She's able to walk around the house, and wrote a mass e-mail to tell us (family) how she's getting on.

Twenty-three down, seven to go.

The One Word quiz

I saw this chez Zhoen recently, and thought it was an intriguing idea: a kind of instant broad-and-shallow overview of a life and state of mind. Or perhaps I'm just lazy this morning.

You can only answer one word. No explanations.

1. Yourself: discontent
2. Your spouse: future
3. Your hair: homemade
4. Your mother: recovering
5. Your father: forgetting
6. Your favorite item: laptop
7. Your dream last night: tornado
8. Your favorite drink: tea
9. Your dream car: Airstream
10. The room you are in: cluttered
11. Your ex: forgiving
12. Your fear: withdrawal
13. What you want to be in 10 years: loved
14. Who you hung out with last night: fictional
15. What you're not: rich
16. Muffins: please
17: One of your wish list items: health
18: Time: accelerating
19. The last thing you did: showered
20. What you are wearing: sweater
21. Your favorite weather: windy
22. Your favorite book: many
23. The last thing you ate: breakfast
24. Your life: overloaded
25. Your mood: contemplative
26. Your best friend: worried
27. What you're thinking about right now: friendship
28. Your car: none
29. What you are doing at the moment: listening
30. Your summer: postponed
31. Your relationship status: hoping
32. What is on your TV: dust
33. What is the weather like: brisk
34. When was the last time you laughed: today

Tagged you! Yes you, in the back there. Don't think that I didn't see you.

Nineteen down, eleven to go.

That new meme

There's a books meme making the rounds, and (in the absence of anything interesting to report) I tagged myself to do it.

1. Name one book that changed your life

Jokey but true answer: Cruden's Complete Concordance to the King James Bible, hardly a day passes when I don't look up something or other. Knowing the sources, recognizing the connections, enriches my reading and increases my happiness therein.

Straight answer: Albert Camus, The myth of Sisyphus which fell into my hands at a time when I was plagued by thoughts of hopelessness and futility. Camus does not attempt to imbue the world with significance, but rather says (with Ecclesiastes, Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare and Epictetus) that what matters is not the world but how you choose (!) to understand it and what you choose to do about it. The final sentence, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy," was a revelation, a revolution, a paradigm switch.

(It's a short and comfortably readable essay, available online. Recommended.)

2. One book you've read more than once

I re-read most books that I bother to acquire (which could be stated as: I only buy books that I expect will be worth re-reading), because I find that it takes at least two readings to squeeze all the juice out of any book. (For example: I've read Nietsche's Jenseits von Gut und Böse twice, and would be lying if I said that I've really understood a tenth of it yet.)

The Great Gatsby and Heart of Darkness are probably the books I most often re-read, just because the tales are so marvellously well told, in such beautiful language. (Anyone wanting to see what "flawless, scintillating prose" really looks like should read these novels.) I've read Proust's A la Recherche de temps perdu two-and-a-half times and will surely read it again. I've read (most of) the Bible twice, both KJV and Tyndale. I re-read Dickens, Hesse and William Gibson on a fairly regular basis.

I went through a phase of reading Günter Grass' Hundejahre every four years or so, and found it significantly different each time: I read it first as an adventure story, friendship lost and found during wartime; the second time I read it as a J'Accuse indictment of Martin Heidegger, the characters were merely puppets riding on his shoulders like the good and bad angels in cartoons, asking "were you a Nazi, and why are you silent?"; most recently (after seeing the magnificent Heimat film series) I was horrified to realize at the end that the only true, convinced Nazi had been the Jewish victim/survivor Goldmund, and that he still is a Nazi. (I own two copies of the book, in English and German, but looking up the names just now could find neither. How odd, have I lent them out?)

3. One book you'd want on a desert island

Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.

4. One book that made you laugh

What first comes to mind is P.G. Wodehouse's marvellous Jeeves novels; pick one, they're all great.

5. One book that made you cry

Dickens' Our mutual friend, damn and blast the man. It's such a blatant tearjerker, and so elbow-nudgingly signalled in advance: you say to yourself, "Oh Christ, he's at it again, here it comes," but oh it works so well. I would not care to meet anyone who could read the death of Betty Higden without crying.

6. One book you wish you'd written

Edward Tufte, Envisioning information. A truly marvellous compendium of good and bad examples of ways to present information so that it is clearly and simply understandable - and not coincidentally also quite pretty. Anyone who deals professionally with information in any form must own this book.

7. One book you wish had never been written

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea. What an egregiously overrated pile of crap that was. There's more wisdom to be found in Albert Camus' toenail-cuttings than in Sartre's navelgazing.

8. One book you're currently reading

My little book for the bathroom cabinet this month is the Gesammelte Gedichte of Manfred Rommel, former Mayor of Stuttgart (and son of the Desert Fox), short humorous verses in dialect. A not untypical sample:

Ehret die Alten
Eh sie erkalten

9. One book you've been meaning to read

Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks. It's one of the cornerstones of modern German literature, one cannot read far into any theory or criticism without coming across it. I doubt whether my German is yet up to the task.

10. No tagging.

If the idea appeals to you, tag yourself (and leave a comment).

Like / Dislike

I can't remember where I saw this, but I liked it. I'm not going to tag anyone, if this speaks to you then tag yourself (and leave me a comment).

I like

Reading. Writing. Opera and live theatre. Books, bookshops and libraries, especially old ones. Bitter dark chocolate. Flowers. Empty stony beaches. Winter. Snow. Cold weather. Women and cats, for similar reasons. Small children. Large dogs. Clouds. Walking. The Prairies (the big empty). Small dinner parties. Old friends. Trains, buses and planes. The grey light before daybreak. Being the first one out of bed mornings. The scrubby trees, bare rock, and long bright summer evenings of the far north (Canada, Finland, Russia). Small towns. Large, busy cities - and knowing that I can leave at any time. Breakfast. Apple computers and software. German beer. French red wine. Public radio. My work. The Internet. Blue cheese. The slightly lisping accent of a Dutchman speaking English. Memories. Smells. A tiny amount of a fine perfume. Open windows. Sitting in the shade on a sunny day. Rivers and lakes. The instantaneity of digital photography. My twenty-year-old leather jacket. Fireplaces. Fog. The smell of the sea. The Trans-Canada Highway as it hugs the shore of Lake Superior. Dancing. Valleys and bridges. Yellow. Blue. White. Mirrors. Birdsong. String quartets and other chamber music. Locally-owned specialist shops.

I dislike

Almost all television. Milk chocolate. Bigotry. Incitement to hatred. Self-willed blind stupidity (the natural-born kind I find merely saddening). Religious fanatics of all kinds. Politicians of most kinds. Large gatherings. Crowded sandy beaches. Telephones. Unannounced visitors. Brussels sprouts. Cars. Summer temperatures above 28°. Microsoft. Any bar, club or restaurant that is "in." Cigarette smoke. Charlatans and fraudsters, especially those who pretend to be religious figures. Top-40 radio. Offices (and other places) where the windows can't be opened. A large amount of a cheap perfume. The Autobahn. Sports. Celebrities. Dumbed-down Hollywood remakes of fine old films. Brown. Purple. Rap music. Intrusive, too-loud music in public places. Tiny hotel beds. Large, anonymous downtown stores. Franchises and chains.

Spangled by the monkey

Savtadotty kindly tagged me for the Spanglemonkey meme, to help me out of my funk.

Who is the last person you high-fived?

I can't remember ever high-fiving anybody. I've been living in Europe for longer than certain blogging buddies of mine have been alive, we don't do that stuff here.

If you were drafted into a war, would you survive?

Yes, I'm clever and ruthless enough to get into the officers' corps and finagle a posting back to headquarters. But I wouldn't last a day on the battlefield.

Do you sleep with the TV on?

I don't watch TV, so also don't sleep in front of it. (Which is not to say that I haven't done this in the distant past.)

Have you ever drunk milk straight out of the carton?

Yes, of course; doesn't everyone except Savtadotty?

Have you ever won a spelling bee?

Possibly, because I was always good at spelling, but I can't remember.

Have you ever been stung by a bee?

No. I used to be afraid of them but have more or less lost that (as opposed to overcoming the fear). I actually let a bee walk along my fingers once, on a dare, and found that it felt surprisingly pleasant: their furry little legs tickle you as they walk.

How fast can you type?

Very fast indeed. Every secretary in every office I've visited has commented on my speed. What they don't see, is that my accuracy is poor. My rate of keystrokes per minute is phenomenally high, but my rate of correctly-typed-words per hour is only middling.

Are you afraid of the dark?

Not really, but it depends where I am. I often enjoy sitting in the dark at home or in a park, or at the beach, but not in unfamiliar or enclosed places.

Eye colour?

Was dark brown, now stripey hazelish.

Have you ever made out at a drive-in?

I hang my head in shame and confess that I have never been to a drive-in at all, let alone making out at one.

When was the last time you chose a bath over a shower?

Oh, that would be at least 11 years ago. I haven't yet had a bath here in Stuttgart. I used to love spending Saturday mornings in the bath, with a thermos of coffee and a few good magazines (at the time, Private Eye and New Statesman), but the bathroom here is not conducive to lingering.

[Updated] I've just remembered something. One of the reasons I gave up my marathon Saturday morning baths was that the shops used to close at noon on Saturdays - and were of course locked tightly shut on Sundays - so if you wanted to do any shopping, you had to rise early and get cracking. The regulations were loosened a few years back to allow them to stay open until 2pm, and again recently to allow city-centre stores to stay open until 6pm, but my neighbourhood shops all close at 2pm. Sunday shopping is still verboten.

Do you knock on wood?

At least once daily.

Do you floss daily?

No.

Can you hula hoop?

Don't know, I've never tried. Probably not, I don't think I have the kind of flexibility it requires.

Are you good at keeping secrets?

Yes, as long as one tells me explicitly that it is a secret.

What do you want for Christmas?

Love and happiness. To be organized, efficient, well-paid and well-respected. A week on the beach flying my kite.

Do you know the Muffin Man?

... say what?

Do you talk in your sleep?

Not the last time I looked, but I do talk to myself nearly all the time I'm awake so I guess the odds are good.

Who wrote the book of love?

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Have you ever flown a kite?

Yes indeed, but not in the last few years. Loved it. Must find make time for that again.

Do you wish on your fallen lashes?

Never heard of that, so no I don't.

Do you consider yourself successful?

On my good days, yes; however, there are also days when I consider myself the biggest waste of oxygen in the CET time zone.

How many people are on your contact list of your cell?

101, if I read the display correctly. I find that hard to believe, surely that's counting telephone numbers not people?

Have you ever asked for a pony?

No, perhaps that's why I ended up here like this?

Plans for tomorrow?

Work. God, how my spirits sink writing that word :-(

Can you juggle?

Don't know, I've never tried. Probably not, I'm not that dexterous.

Missing someone now?

Yes, several someones in fact. I've often thought it a great pity, that life doesn't have a "reboot" button.

When was the last time you told someone I Love You?

Just over a week ago.

And truly meant it?

Now, there's a depressing question. Years ago.

How often do you drink?

Meaning alcohol? As good as never, one day a month at most; and then my limit is three beers or an equivalent measure of wine. I didn't set out to be teetotal, it's just happened this way. For some reason, at some time, I simply lost the taste for it.

How are you feeling today?

Miserable. I have an almost-migraine headache, a sore throat and dripping nose, incipient tennis elbow (again) in my left arm from too much typing, and a buttload of assorted worries. That most of them are of my own making doesn't particularly help.

What do you say too much?

"I thought that's how you wanted it, didn't we discuss this yesterday?"

Have you ever been suspended or expelled from school?

Are you kidding? Never came close to it.

What are you looking forward to?

Two Ring Cycles, this summer in Toronto and next in NYC.

Have you ever crawled through a window?

I have a dim memory of having done this at a neighbour's house after she locked herself out, but I wouldn't swear to that.

Have you ever eaten dog food?

Is this a trick question? No.

Can you handle the truth?

"Just because something is true, doesn't mean that you must say it." Depends on the presentation and the subject. In my experience, people who ask whether you can handle the truth, are asking for permission to abuse and insult you.

Do you like green eggs and ham?

On paper, hardbound, yes; I'd probably run a mile to avoid them on a plate.

Any cool scars?

No, and no tattoos either. What a shallow-water, seatbelt-fastened, sheltered life I have lived.

---

No tags will be issued; if this meme speaks to you then go with it.

Four

Zhoen tagged me for a meme (actually, Pronoia tagged me first but I didn't see it until this afternoon), and I can never refuse an invitation (at least not online, in real life I do manage to say "no" on occasion).

Four jobs I have had.

My first paid job was as assistant to my father's textbook-writing-partner, a prof in the Department of Education at the University of Toronto. I was dogsbody for a few summer sessions, running the Gestetner offset machine (does anyone remember those? the chill of the still-wet paper, the smell of evaporating alcohol) and generally fetchin' and carryin', yassuh.

While studying architecture, I spent two summers working night shift on a commercial printing press. It was loud as hell, conversation was impossible, and the work was physically tiring but utterly monotonous. I enjoyed it greatly, because after the first hour or so my body did the work by itself without involving my mind, I could dream about holidays or review the book I was reading. I learned about quality there, about the importance of taking one's own work seriously. There were two night-shift bosses, Smith and Jones; and Jones was a lazy bugger, he would get the machines running well enough and go to sleep on the paper bales. The crews bitched and moaned if they were assigned to work with him, because "he just runs crap": the output wasn't up to their personal standards. Now, they were talking about differences that I could not see (didn't know how to look for). I found that very interesting.

My first job as an architect was for the wrong company: I misread the name on a doorway. I was walking down the street with my portfolio, and thought I'd arrived at a young and fashionable crew, but landed up in a very staid and proper old-school-tie company that did mostly government work. However, they had computers (and a computer in 1984 was a very far cry from what you are looking at today, dear reader) and they taught me to use them, which (to cut a long story short) is how I came to be writing databases in Germany.

Between architecture and Germany, I spent five years at the company that made the systems I'd been using in that old-school-tie office. It was fascinating work, I spent half my time teaching (wonderful) and the other half writing software, customizing the systems to meet particular needs.

My favourite experience in a customer's office, was with the police force of a county in northern England. In such hierarchical systems, your status as visitor depends on the status of the person whom you are meeting. The first time I went there, nobody knew who I was visiting, so the cops spoke to me cheerfully and without undue formality, which I enjoyed. Well, I was there to meet the Chief Constable - a fine English understatement of a title: the CC is king, he is the direct owner of every police station, every jail and every single cop in his county. There are exactly three people in England who can tell a CC what to do: his wife, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister; and the CC had his driver take me to my hotel after work. The next morning, word had gotten around, and the atmosphere was very different: the oldtimers stood up straight as I approached, the young ones turned pale and their knees began to tremble if I looked at them. It was really quite funny.

Four movies I can watch over and over.

Nobody's Fool a minor but well-made film starring Paul Newman, which nobody has ever heard of. Call it the coming of age of a 60-year-old man, or the story of a man who is surprised to discover that he is happy.

Alice in der Städten (Alice in the Cities) Wim Wenders' early masterpiece of laconic filmmaking.

It's a wonderful life every Christmas, like clockwork. It gets better each time.

Pat Garret and Billy the Kid. Why are so many of the best stories about betrayal?

May I invent a category?

Four movies I've only seen once, but would love to see again.

Man of Flowers, by Paul Cox. A wonderful, funny, heartbreaking film about sadness, loneliness, ageing and coming to terms with one's childhood. I identified strongly with the protagonist; take that as you will.

The Sacrifice, by Andrei Tarkovsky. In my humble opinion, one of the finest films ever made.

Stand der Dinge (State of things), by Wim Wenders. Filmmaking at the end of the world.

Heimat, by Edgar Reitz. The history of Germany in the twentieth century, in eleven episodes and 16 hours. Truly magnificent.

Four places I have lived

I realized when compiling this list that I haven't really moved around much at all; although I have lived away from "home" for well over half of my life, I have only lived in four cities in 47 years.

Saskatoon, the Paris of the Prairies, where my sister and I were born, and where we lived until I was six. One of the coldest and windiest cities in the world.

Toronto, until I went to university. My parents still live in the house they bought 41 years ago. It was known then as "Toronto the Good" because only the churches were open on Sunday; these days it describes itself as "like New York run by the Swiss" meaning clean, safe, punctual and not too exciting.

London, to study architecture. I expected to be there for the length of the five-year course plus a month for sight-seeing, but stayed seventeen years.

Stuttgart, for the last ten years.

Four TV shows I love to watch.

I hardly ever watch TV since the cable service was cut (they doubled the price for the World Soccer Championships, and I said words to the effect of "no thanks"). Without cable I can only get one channel, and even that only has a steady image on rainy days. I haven't yet missed TV enough to have the cable reconnected. When I did watch TV, I was a fan of:

Married, with Children

The Simpsons

Space Night. Hour-long unedited, uncommented film from satellites and the space station, showing the Earth slowly turning. Every now and then, at long intervals, a caption appears: "Cairo", "Nile delta". It's by a large margin the most popular programme on German TV after midnight.

Long, glacially-slow-paced, beautifully-filmed documentaries about odd subjects on ARTE. (Typical scene: the camera looks out across a river estuary; there is no "focus of interest" or active centre to the image, we just look at the water, sky and land. After twenty seconds, a seagull sails across the screen.)

Four places I've been on vacation.

Newport, Rhode Island - lovely in winter, only a few brave tourists listening to the Atlantic waves breaking.

The south of France.

Mainland Greece.

Fuerteventura and Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Tenerife has the one of the most frightening airport approach paths in the world: the airport is on the flattened-off top of a mountain, you fly along a valley below the peaks left and right, towards a vertical wall of stone.

Four blogs I visit daily.

There are a dozen that I read daily, and many more that I check at least once a week.

Four nine favorite foods

My mother's Beef Wellington.

Petit Balun oysters, in the restaurant across from the Gare de l'Est in Paris.

Bacon and farm-fresh eggs over easy, in a cafe in Southey, Saskatchewan.

Kässpätzle (think of it as German macaroni-and-cheese, but with homemade noodles, particularly tasty cheese, and fried onions and bits of ham mixed in), in a very nice family-run restaurant around the corner from Princess' home.

Sushi, in a restaurant on Bloor Street West near the Jane subway station in Toronto.

Chicken tikka masala, in a basement restaurant in Wardour Warren Street in London.

Züricher Geschnetzteltes (think of it as Swiss Beef Stroganoff), in a restaurant high (literally) in the Alps, at the top of the Brenner pass in Switzerland.

Fish and chips, takeaway from a shop that no longer exists in a street that no longer exists, where my grandmother lived in south-east London.

Tramezzini (tiny overstuffed sandwiches) at the bar of a café in the university quarter of Venice, just west of the Accademia bridge.

Four places I'd rather be

Um, nowhere actually. I'm quite content where I am as long as I can get away from time to time. More money would be nice.

Well, OK, there are many places that I would like to transport myself to when certain moods strike. There is a specific field near the Forks, where the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers come together, where I will build a small house with tall ceilings and high windows for watching the moon through, when I win the lottery. Venice is always nice for a time, as are Manhattan, London, Paris and Vienna. I would like to go back to San Sebastian in northern Spain and sit on the beach for a day or two, and just listen to the waves breaking.

"Where I would rather be" is best answered as a question of spirit rather than of place: I would rather be relaxed and calm, not in a hurry, not under pressure to perform for myself or others, not grindingly aware of deadlines past and future.

Four albums I love.

What, only four?

Richard Wagner: Parzifal

Lori Carson: Everything I touch runs wild

Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto featuring Tom Jobim: Getz/Gilberto

Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos, Glenn Gould at age 25 playing like a young god.

But ask me again tomorrow and you'd get a different list. Apart from Parzifal.

Four vehicles I've owned

I have never owned a total of four vehicles in my life: I'm one of the last living non-drivers. Never had a driver's license, never even taken lessons.

I had a red tricycle with white wheels. I remember being intimidated by the size of that front wheel, feeling that I would be unable to control it and that I would cause a dreadful accident.

My first bicycle weighed more than I did, but it had three gears! Graduating from riding around the "small block" to the enclosing "big block" was a huge step.

My second (and to date last) bicycle was what we called a "ten-speed": racing frame, thin wheels, saddle like sitting astride a pool cue, weighed less than the stack of books that the wannabe med students took home every weekend. I rode all over the city, going down the long thin park of the Don River valley to the Toronto Islands every weekend in summer.

My vehicle of choice these days is the ICE-3 train. Fast, comfortable, smooth, quiet, with canned radio and a plug for the laptop at every seat, it's like being in a nice club. Serves the second-worst coffee in all of Europe.

Four others, to pass the chain on...

Well, who hasn't done this yet? Let's have Noorster, SirBarrett, Sass and She.

On statistics

If you have ever glanced down at the bottom of the left-hand column (don't bother) you will have seen a pair of icons from Statcounter.com and Sitemeter.com, which provide (overlapping but different) information about visitors to my blog. I resisted putting the counters for several months after I started blogging, feeling that knowing how many people were reading might influence my writing, but that hasn't happened so far. Perhaps that might be different if I had 12 thousand page views per month (as Mindy recently noted), but I would hope not.

I look at these three times a week or so (because the free version of Statcounter only stores the most recent 100 page-loads), to see who's been here recently. The stats are pretty abstract, they tell me (among other things) the browser you use, your operating system version, the city where your ISP resides and the IP address you are currently using. Statcounter goes one further and also tells me how many times you have viewed the blog. (The current record-holder is my sister, in both first (home) and third (office) places.)

Nonetheless, this abstract information is often enough to identify regular visitors (I can guess which Opera user in College Station TX reads my blog, and who is reading from Lisbon Lisboa); and if you leave a comment, then I can cross-link the time of your visit with the time that you posted. Gotcha.

And you thought the Internet was anonymous?

My sister needs to keep on her toes, though, because there is a new contender: catching up fast at 200 page-loads is a reader in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan whom I have not yet identified. At first I thought that I knew who it was, but then I noticed that the visitor always uses a Windows XP machine. Puzzling: the person I thought of has a brand-new Mac.

Another puzzler is the reader in Anchorage, Alaska, who has been here 19 times but as far as I can tell has not yet left a comment.

Please say "hello" next time, you two: I like to know who's reading. (If you don't wish to comment publicly, then use the mail address at the top left.)

In other news, it's Springsteen day here in Udgeland. It doesn't happen often, but when the bug bites there is no denying it. I was lustily singing along, but this stanza caught in my throat:

Girl you're looking at two big spenders
Why the world don't know what me and Wayne might do
Our pa's each own one of the World Trade Centers
For a kiss and a smile I'll give mine all to you.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

In other other news, I have finally discovered Who I Really Am.



Neo, the "One". Neo is the computer hacker-turned-Messiah of the Matrix. He leads a small group of human rebels against the technology that controls them. Neo doubts his ability to lead but doesn't want to disappoint his friends. His goal is for a world where all men know the Truth and are free from the bonds of the Matrix.

Neo: 63%
James Bond, Agent 007: 58% (I hope they mean Sean Connery!)
Indiana Jones: 58%
Maximus: 54%
The Amazing Spider-Man: 54%
William Wallace: 50%
Lara Croft: 50%
The Terminator: 42%
Batman, the Dark Knight: 42%
El Zorro: 38%
Captain Jack Sparrow: 29%

I had to look up Maximus, William Wallace (mea culpa) and Capt. Sparrow.

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
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