You saw a leader - we saw Captain Ray Gun

As the US goes through its process to pick it’s contestants for November’s presidential election, I am reminded of one of the most striking differences between US and British perceptions: namely Ronald Reagan (or Capt Ray Gun of the doomed Enterprise Starship).

Even before he died in June 2005, I had noticed that, regardless of stated party affiliation, the former president seemed to be highly regarded and loved in the US. Americans credit him with bringing down the Berlin wall and give much credit to him for his method of pulling together the best advisors and making no nonsense demands of those advisors, among many other things.

But his time in power was in the 80s and in the UK this coincided with one of satires most savage periods. I cannot talk for all 59 million people in the UK, however my lasting impression is that the Star Wars president was always portrayed as a bumbling old fool who was merely a mouth piece for the backroom staff. I certainly never gave him any great credit in the downfall of the wall and felt that the fall was caused by the already apparent moderation of Mikhail Gorbachev. My recollection was also that the UK overall took a very dim view of Iran contra scandal and the free Government money to his party contributors*.

So imagine my surprise when I came here to the US still holding the feeling that RR was the puppet from the ‘The Presidents Brain Is Missing’ to find he received the level of respect and downright affection showered on him by all normally only reserved for saints. The American public (well the handful of people I talked to) loved and revered him.

I am not saying the US public is wrong and I’m sure the UK view was at least harsh; I am merely drawing the contrast to the gulf in diverse views.



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Bazza

Governments giving out money (or honours) to people who make donations to party funds - surely never happen in the UK (a-hem).

Suits you sir!

In his blog 'National Hosiery Obsession' my friend Tom talks of the great dislike of white socks by the other members of his Gym near London and this reminded me of one of the differences I noticed when crossing from the UK to the US – namely office dress code.

Between the UK and the US I did pretty much the same job in pretty much the same environment. The difference was when working in the UK I wore a suit at all times. However, in the US there is a less stringent dress code. It is business casual, basically slacks and a shirt. What difference did it make to my work? None at all! However, it did add another complication in my early residence in this country as I struggled to work out exactly what business casual was (and I am not that convinced I have it even now).

The style of dress not withstanding, the other significant change was that in the UK even people who were disinterested in fashion would update their work suit with high frequency. Double breasted, single breasted, high button, single button, Navy Blue or Olive Green there is a continuous cycle of suit fashion. Here in the US if I had managed to stabilise my waistline, I could still be wearing the same slacks and shirts as five years ago.

So to my terry toweling befuddled friend that explains why there are no white socks in your English gym. They are just very, very, very out of fashion.


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Bazza

The biggest mistake ever

You don’t get to middle adulthood without making a few mistakes. I have made my share. I’ll always regret the incident with the chocolate milk, the banana and donkey and I still blush when I think of the time I took the Olsen twins to McDonalds

Those were serious mistakes but way and above those outbreaks of stupidity is my decision to buy a PC with Vista on it.
It’s not that Vista is a terrible operating system it’s just underwhelming and irrelevant. Below I have listed the pros and cons that I have personally found since August (compared to Windows 2000 or XP SP2).

Pros.
· Spider Solitaire is much nicer.
· The Volume control mixer has a level for each application not just file type.
· Some of the icons are nicer and browsing folders seems easier
· Er that’s it

Cons
· There was no driver for my printer.
· It’s slow – for the PC it’s on, it’s very slow.
· That Aero interface is pointless.
· The gadgets are inferior to the gadgets available with Google Desktop.
· I still have not been able to use the wireless NIC that came preinstalled (driver issue).
· The security stuff is intrusive.

When I was making the buying decision I was thinking Mac with OS X or PC with Vista and I chose PC because of the software we already owned and I figured being a Microsoft product Vista would become ubiquitous and getting a little early knowledge would help me. The Mac for its part was just plain too expensive. However, upon reflection the cost of the time spent on the wireless card and buying a new printer the Mac would have not been so expensive. I also find it interesting that the take up of Vista does not seem to have been anything like as rapid as I expected. I have yet to come across a business that has moved wholesale to Vista.


On the subject of Macs – I love them! Unfortunately, they have always been just a little more money than I could afford. And if you are following the amusing Mac/PC adverts don’t be fooled. I was a Mac user during the introduction or OS 7 and OS 8 and OS X.0. None of them were as smooth as Apple would have you believe and we still see some incompatibilities between OS X.4 and OS X.5 (leopard). Lastly, also realise that the Mac is just a nice (very very nice) GUI running on a cut down Unix system.

If I had to decide again, knowing what I know now, what would I do? For ease of transition and lack of learning curve - given our budget - we should have gone for XP on the same PC platform. The network cards and printers would all have worked and it would have been faster than that donkey when he saw the banana.

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Bazza

Nothing says I love you like a CD ...

As mentioned in Musical Mayhem amongst other things, I gave my sons a bunch of CDs this Christmas. Actual physical CDs. Which, when I thought about it, was strange.

Buying and giving real CDs was strange because both of the boys have iPods. In fact the whole family has iPods or other MP3 players. Moreover, all the current digital music devices we have actually represent somewhere between our second and fifth such device (and that is not counting things that are primarily something else but with music ability - such as PCs, Phones, Palm Pilots, PSPs etc.).

Personally, I originally went digital because I was traveling between the US and UK and it was a lot easier to carry 10 MP3 CDS than it was 50 or 60 music CDs. I had my mega expensive 32mb Rio Diamond; that thing would run out of songs before the plane even taxied to the runway but damn it was cool for 1999. Once I had my Rio I pretty much stopped listening to actual CDs. I stopped buying them completely and started buying my music electronically when iTunes and Napster et al got their act together a year or two later.

So being a digital family when the boys received their gifts this past Christmas morning, the first thing they did was rip them to MP3. This enabled them to listen to the songs on their iPods, in my car (it has iPod connector) or from the main music PC in my house. And that was the point that it hit me and I asked myself.

“Why didn't I just buy them the songs on iTunes or Amazon.com in the first place?”

Legal questions aside (and that’s a lifetime of blogs), I guess that it is just that we still need to give something real – something that can be touched, wrapped and unwrapped. I guess computer files are fine for presents to ourselves but when we give a gift to someone that we love it has to feel like it has a value and an MP3 file is not acquainted with the same value yet - even for geeks like me.


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Bazza

Musical Mayhem at Christmas

I hope you had a good Christmas break and I wish you a happy New Year.

Christmas at our house was excellent because it was my turn to host my two sons. The two boys are 11 (though nearly 12 as he points out) and 13 and they normally live with their mother near London, England.

They are pretty normal for 11 (Nearly 12!) and 13 year olds and into the sort of things you expect (i.e. Mentos and Diet Coke). High up on that list is music and so it should be no surprise that Christmas stockings contained a number of CDs.

CDs make a great a gift for them as unlike Play Station games, PSP games, DVDs or Videos there is no 'region' or NTSC/PAL issues. Remote control cars or other small electronics have problems with 110 volts/220 volts or plug pins so CDs work well as a gift. The only problem was the music or more precisely the contrast.

It’s a small complaint really as I didn't have to deal with deeply offensive gangsta rap or average pop bands. No punk and neither Hannah Montanna, no! I had to deal with one child discovering classic heavy metal and the other into the more mainstream end of Hip Hop. The days after Christmas, around the house and in the car, were a constant bone jarring jump from Led Zeppelin to Jay Z or Guns'N'Roses to Timberland. Now I did my time DJing and at no time in my life have I jumped from ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ into ‘The way I Are’. Don't get me wrong, both are fine just not together. It's like wearing leather trousers with a silk jacket. Could be worse of course and as they get older I'm sure it will. However, it was certainly a test.


Now where is that Aerosmitth/Run DMC track again??



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Bazza