Now, I may be completely wrong, this is all conjecture of course as I am no expert in the economy for sure.
Recently I have been made aware of the awful crash of a country I loved like a lover, like a sibling or like a child I am not certain which, just it was an unconditional love – that is for sure.
Greece, it seems, had fallen on bad times, it has become debt ridden and bankrupt, it can no longer function and there is a general malaise and public discontent.
As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in that fair and beautiful land I have some comprehension how this has come about.
Basically, they have been rogered brutally by the Great Powers, not for the first time either. It is a pattern one can see repeated on both macro and individual scale and is a perfect example of the ongoing slave trade these days. On an individual scale the crash of the western economies over the past few years has been down to the same cynical exploitation of greed by the money lending corporations.
In the late 1950′s Karamanlis paved the way for Greece’s entry into the then EEC.
Since then the real West : America, Germany, France, England and China have convinced this poor Balkan state that it too, could and should, be living the Western dream.
Slowly this appeared possible, The Greeks, of course, knew that they were in no way inferior to the rest of the Western countries so they took the bait an waited….and spent
Sure enough it was not long before their way of life was changing, they were soon reaping the rewards of this new way of life.
In 1985 the average Greek drove 0.25 of a car which was 15 years old. By 2005 the stats had changed to 1.5 cars and 2 years old on average. The Greeks had also become accustomed to a steady increase their ‘standard of living’, mobile phones were widespread, laptops, newer automobiles, new cocktails, German air conditioning, French Wine, English steel, Chinese gadgets, American clothes ….. they had made it, and all because they had answered the simple question :
“why don’t you live like us?”
well the trouble is that there is one simple answer ~
“they can’t afford to!”
You see, this lifestye we are so busy selling the world costs money, we can afford some sort of fascimilie of the lifestyle because it is actually a representation of the lifestyle we have created ourselves…our temperate climate and historical progress has allowed us to create a way of living rich in the very goods we have invented..to some extent….
Not so for the rest of the workd, not so for most of the world, all we will do to them is sucker them into chasing our dreams and saddle with a vast consumer debt…
Greece is now in financial ruin because it tried to ape some ethereal soap opera lifestyle which maybe does not even exist, and certaionlyl if it does, proffers far less in terms if humanity and joy than the languid and happy lives they had before this katanalotic idiocy started them up.
Posted in Media on 08. Feb, 2010
I watched Invictus the other evening. Generally I have a little gripe with Clint’s movies, they sort of shout out at me that my heart strings are being tugged at mercilessly, that the characters will do just what is expected of them and that there will be an honest and venerable ethnic minority person who shows the white man up for his oafishness. Well as a white oaf I am happy to be led in many ways and have to confess that the Invictus movie took me on a ride which I loved at every turn. It maybe my soulful and unerring love of the sport of Rugby which allowed my ducts to well up with ease throughout the film, but in essence I completely enjoyed the movie.
Well there was one problem – there was a whole scene of the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa omitted from the film – we all know about it, the press kind of tried to keep it a secret but true Rugby followers have this story in their lore, deep and well understood.
Early on in the Rugby World Cup there was a secret meeting between Nelson Mandela and Will Carling. Notes taken by presidential aides confirm that Mandela asked, nay demanded that Carling’s men throw their semi-final to New Zealand and deliberately miss tackles on the useless and lumbering Lomu to make him appear good. It is well known in Rugby circles that England could have walked off with the Cup with ease – everyone knows that!!
Well Carling, under pressure from the RFU bowed to Mandela’s demands and Rugby history was made when the Boks lifted the cup.
It would have been nice if Eastwood had remembered the magnanimous gesture of the English team and recorded that for all to know.
Om my god I thought to myself as I drove along. Funnily I am back to using a N95 again, after a couple of years with Windows Touchscreen devices and more recently the wondrous HTC Hero.
Well the voice comes on the radio and announces free voice navigation from now on with my Nokia N95.
I have to tell you that the N95 still stands out as a superb piece of kit. Even having used ‘more advanced’ gadgets since first falling in love with the N95.
So I am happy about that, my return to Symbian and the easy way in which the phone works, its easy operability and ruggedness – so a free upgrade to the Sat Nav was a great concept.
I visit therefore Nokia Maps Updater online and look forward to updating my phone with a certain pride that it is still the ‘dogs’.
Then Nokia hits me with its bombshell – please select model – it is apparently only available on selected models.
I try in vain, downloading the app anyway and installing when it warns that it is not compatible with my phone… and indeed it is not.
Oh, the disappointment, I was so buoyed by Nokia’s forward thinking ( loyalty can be purchased by such moves ) that I spent a while uninstalling the Ovi Maps and transferring all my Nokia data to a new PC I have… Only to find this.
I guess I will have to source some other Sat Nav for the Nokia.
Most saddened by whole affair.
Surfing is great fun, anyone who has slipped into the sea with a board knows that. It is a spiritual experience, bringing you closer to nature.
But there is a darker side too, nature is savage and anyone who wants to ride the wild sea must pit themselves against brutal and harsh elements on a regular basis.
Now, I am writing this as a warning to those not in the know. You have all read about the precipitous drop in at the Mavericks, we all know about the vicious reef beneath the Pipeline’s azure hues and we have all seen recent footage from Jaws. But for some of us, in our own backyard, there is a break so dangerous, so hostile and so unpredictable that only the foolhardy would paddle out into its apparently benign break.
I am talking about the Hotpipes in Shoreham – UK.
Here nature’s forces are funnelled into a maelstrom which makes the slab at Teahupoo look like a longboarding grom’s wet dream. On the South Coast of sleepy Sussex gargantuan waves break over a reef of razor sharp coral and scrap metal. The prevailing onshore winds lash the surface into a frenzy or churning mush which means that the waves are not only unsurfable but any slight error is generally punished severely.
Moreover the break is patrolled ( I can not say surfed as these locals know the stupidity of entering the Shoreham waters ) by a gang of out of work welders with severe personality disorders. Not having the politeness of Sir Ken Bradshaw these types will bite a chunk from your board while it is still on the roof of your car. Needless to say car crime is rife in this area and it is a designated police ‘no go zone‘.
mean local surf dude at the hotpipes
As if things could not conspire more to make this place a spot to bookmark under the heading : do not surf here; there is more. It has recently been discovered that Shoreham Port Authority has been laundering Russian Uranium at the Power Station and the Geiger Counters go off the scale down at ‘the Pipes’. This radiation in the water has led to severe mutations amongst the indigenous shark population.
So, please take it from me. Do not venture down to, perhaps, the nastiest break on the planet. This is really a place to avoid.
This article was originally submitted to Magic Seaweed, but they, strangely did not want to publish this denouément of such a break.
Like OMG, how mant iterations does one have to go through to find a name for a new media company.
Last year we brainstormed this, finding many obscure and wonderful words – only to find them already taken. Eventually even an exhaustive search of foregin words drew a blank.
Trouble is the massive number of creative and digital agencies who have already undergone this process – looking for a catchy, easy to spell and inspiring name to brand themselves with.
It is almost tempting to go for luck and use a generator like :http://adactio.com/extras/newmediagenerator/.
I have searched exhaustively through thinks which inspire me: surfing, sea, sun, Greece, Nietschze, clarity, sincerity, simpleness, candour but the similies and synonymns are already synonymous with existing companies.
Maybe I will just stick an “i” infront of a word.
iDare.
Well I was recommended the HTC Hero by a lovely Mel at Orange upgrades ( over the Samsung HD Omnia ) and I am forever in her debt.
The Android powereed phone is like a natural progression into the area of cloud computing. I had already made forays into this via extensive usage of Google Apps and the HTC Hero just took it to a new level – cloud computing on the move.
The best thing you can say about a new gadget it that it is intuitive – and it is to the max!
Touchscreen is a joy and far more user friendly than the Omnia i900′s fiddly stylus dictated function.
What HTC have delivered here is a beatiful package which does credit to the Android’s ease of use.
Apps install simply and the market has thousands of useful packages.
Everyone keeps going on about the iphone but in reality this is only because it is their only experience of a high end smartphone, if any of them had owned a Palm Treo 600 some 8 years ago they would not be so amazed. God I get bored with iphones.
The camera is a bit dodge though.
I was asked the other day how I felt that ecommerce had changed over the past few years and my initial reaction was that it has not. I mean, in essence you still proffer up your goods and services online and try to induce your customers to click the “buy now” or follow the call to action, whatever it may be.
I got to thinking a bit more, my glib immediate reaction needed some form of analysis….
Further I felt that the massive increase in user generated content online must be a very important factor in the way in which the online shopping experience has changed over the past few years. Even as little as 5 years ago the Internet was pretty much read only for the consumer, you looked and read but did not play an active role in it, much like watching TV or reading a book. Soon the blogoshpere took over and forums and niche industry sites captured a decent market share of the online audience – this was the beginning of social media.
The very fact that now people were having their say online meant that gradually the onus has shifted. For a while price comparison sites dominated the search engine results (SERPS) and the consumer was able to view many websites’ offerings side by side. I suspect Google no longer give these sites the ‘exposure’ they merit in order to maintain their grip on paid results, but that is another story.
Nowadays if you are shopping, say for a new Sat Nav device you are far more likely to ask someone, rather than blithely click on the first result from your favourite search engine, you may ask someone down the pub, at work or at the school gates, this means that you may be searching for say “Dabs” after the recommendation rather than “Sat Nav”.
Some interesting issues make themselves evident now, if you search for a company by name you are quite likely to come across user generated ( and unmoderated ) results – you will find forums, Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and consumer groups all showing up in the search results.
Social Media has given SEO a new and very powerful tool to drive targeted traffic to your site; potential customers will have gleaned trust and knowledge of your site prior to visiting so that conversion rates are much higher. This leads of course to a corresponding necessity to spend on alternative routes to market such as paid advertising.
Of course it takes time and effort to set up, track and maintain all the social media strategies but done properly this can generate increased exposure and qualified traffic. D
As new social media sites come and go you will have to keep an eye on where it will be pertinent to increase exposure and where words will be wasted, it is here to stay and traditional SEO tactics will have to change, or be left behind.
Well I have been using the Samsung Omnia ( SGH i900 ) for a year now and have grown to love it.
Indeed I have come to rely heavily on its additional features, my email and the handy little Route 66 Sat Nav.
It all came crashing down last week, though when the phone appeared to be maxing out its RAM – you see unlike the quite locked down Symbian Phones or the Apple OS which keeps itself removed from its applications in essence, Windows is more feminine about its associations, it takes every piece of software personally and creates registry entries for them all, cute but not without issues.
I am at fault, of course, I had started installing 3rd party apps with little care or thought and one of these must have got itself into the start up registry entry and then managed to loop through some memory intensive and insensitive routine.
A long labour of turning on, sudden realisation that hard reset was only option, spine tingling fear as I entered 1,2,3,4 and allowed the Omnia to erase ALL data on its 16gigs…..
Then, a joy, I loved turning it back on, it was like an old friend, I had forgotten just how fast it had been in its youth, even with SPB Mobile shell it leapt and danced in time with my finger taps – the baby is back and whirring.
I am even due an upgrade from Orange, who now will be offering the 3G iPhone and am completely ambivalent, sing my sweet Samsung
Well I have been warbling about pension release for ages now and have sourced a new information place for all issues related to pension unlocking and such like at Pension Release Information
Naturally don’t believe everything you read. Releasing cash from your pension is a shortsighted measure for some, but then again a bird in the hand……
Having just returned from a lazy 1000 mile traversal of France in a Renault Traffic I found the Sat nav facility on the Omnia superb. I have all the Western Europe maps on a small memory card which I bought on ebay
With the Route 66 application installed the i900 whirred into life. Sadly the battery was taking a hit as was the fuel tank of the Renault but we made it there.
The Sat Nav responded with alacrity to every sinuous and treacherous bend in the French transport system, it located the rare Garage on the peage and even warned when nearing campsites.
The phone ( the Omnia ) is a splendin travel companion, combining Sat Nav, Wifi, DivX movies, a very sturdy 5 Megapixel camera, mp3, radio, 16 gig of storage and of course a telephone. I would like more games but I guess they will come and a final reques would be a big stonking battery do that the machine stays on when you want it turned on.
