As I peroused The Daily Whim I came across this:
This is a chain interviewing game for blogs. Here are its rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying “interview me.� The first five commenters will be the participants.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some.)
He was looking for 5 victims and always up for a challenge, I volunteered and here are the questions that I have been asked, followed by the replies:
Tell me the reason(s) you bought your first home computer … what in the world did you think you were going to do with it?
First a little background for this answer. Back in the very early 80’s my brother had a Sinclair Spectrum computer that had to be programmed in Basic or have games loaded using and old cassette recorder. Many a happy hour was spent typing in a full program listing from a magazine, only to find that there was a missprint and it didn’t bloody work at all! My last contact with the thing was when I designed and programmed my own version of Space Invaders that had the Aliens swooping around using coordinates calculated from sines. everything worked great until the complexity of the game used up all of the 48k of memory! you could shoot them but they could only be persuaded to die if the code was edited to leave out the dying beep and limit the alien numbers to 1. This made the whole thing pointless and I returned to skateboarding, alchohol and punk rock with renewed vigour. It was not until the 90’s that i found a desire to tinker with technology again.
While working in the Falklands during 1995, a friend who taught at the military school was going on vacation and asked me to do a favour. she needed some typing done on the school computer and I was welcome to borrow it and make use of it for the 6 weeks that her and her husband were away. I was soon esconsed in my accomodation block with the school’s Acorn computer and got the typing done first. At that time I had been experimenting with those 3D pictures that you look through to see dolphins etc. i had figured out how they worked and was busy creating basic ones by hand with pen and ink. The Acorn had a graphics program that made mspaint look advanced, but I soon found that I could do this far quicker on a computer than I could with pencil and pen!
The computer was soon back helping to teach kids and I was going through magazines, finding out as much as I could about computers. Being single and well paid, before the year was up I had gone on vacation and bought a Pentium 90 laptop from Texas Instruments that had a 1.2gig drive, a TFT screen, built in sound card, Windows 95 and an external 4xCD ROM! The guy in the store closed the deal when he threw in a copy of CorelDraw 5 for free.
Graphics were the reason behind my initial computer purchase. I was soon producing posters/flyers for various minor events and I soon found that my self taught knowledge was far in advance of those around me so I ended up as a person who everyone turned to for advice and help. The audio capabilities of that laptop were also pushed to their limits when I discovered virtual synths such as Rebirth. I bought an external sound card with midi, a keyboard and some cables to hook it up to my stereo. The neighbours hated it but I was hooked.
It might not seem much now but at the time it was probably the most powerfull PC in the Islands! I used it and abused it until late in 1998 when I built my first full sized computer that, incidentally lasted me up until just a few weeks back, a cutting edge PII 450! The Falklands got Internet access in 1999 and from that point on there was no stopping me!
After witnessing the recent US election cycle and its aftermath, give your impressions of the impact weblogs have had on politics … positive, negative, negligible, or whatever … and the direction they would now take in Your Perfect World.
I found the whole thing very depressing. The bloggers/web-surfers struck me, for the most part, as being at a different intellectual level to the average Joe in the local bar. they did a great job of spreading the word to those that had already heard it but made very little difference in reality. We sometimes forget that most of the World has never bothered looking at a blog and that the vast majority of web users check their emails and get the latest news and gossip from Yahoo and MSN but do little else. Bloggers did manage to have some influence with the media types and there were a couple of instances where headlines were made, but in the end it made little difference. Some of the personal attacks made in comments and blog entries lowered the tone for me. Many bloggers seemed to have forgotten about the real world and believed that they were making a huge difference but they were surrounding themselves with their own kind in a big technological bubble. Here in more rural Wisconsin, people were more worried about a change of President effecting hunting and snowmobiling. It was only through the votes of the big cities like Milwaukee that gave this state the blue colour on the map.
I would like to see blogging carry on in much the same way as it presently does but without some of the self-importance and bullshit. Any influence that bloggers might have would seem to be in the online and software communities. the drive for Firefox being a prime example. Bloggers can indeed make a difference, but only in those fields where their input is at the forefront. Their voices, however loud they may have appeared, were but tiny whispers during the election.
You’ve spent a good bit of time in the South Atlantic, an area most think of as rather inhospitable, but one of which you seem quite fond. What brought you there, and what kept you there?
I was initially driven to take a job in the Falklands by nothing more than finances. It was 1989 and I was broke and needed to earn some decent money quickly. A friend pointed me to a job ad in a national newspaper. I applied and heard nothing for 3 months and then a letter came inviting me to an interview. 2 weeks later I was getting off a Royal Airforce plane at Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands. My adventure had begun.
Over time I came to have quite a liking for the place and some of the opportunities that it afforded me. What made me stay there was the lifestyle. I had a single room in a military style accomodation block. We worked a basic 65 hours a week with anything extra counting as overtime which payed much the same hourly rate as normal time. My longest week was in November of 1989 and came to 115 hours! Being away from Great Britain, all the earnings were tax free! Every six months I got a whole month of vacation and was flown for free all the way back to England. 6 months on and 1 month off, an almost perfect setup for a young and single guy. Beer and cigarettes were real cheap in the Falklands and nearly everything else was provided by the employer so that after a 6 month tour there was usually at least 5 months worth of wages in the bank just waiting to be spent during the 1 month vacation. PARTY!
I started to travel and ended up making some great friends in Baltimore, Maryland and spent most of my vacations there. I also was able to visit Hawaii, Hong Kong, Brunei (in Borneo), Holland, New Orleans, New York, Boston, San Francisco and whole bunch of places inbetween.
What about the opportunities? I was able to volunteer as a DJ on the British Forces Radio station and I played my own eclectic choice of music for a couple of hours, once or twice a week for a couple of years. I often flew to my place of work in a variety of helicopters, both military and civilian. I lived alongside some incredible wildlife. I was able to catch a ride on a C-130 Hercules transport plane to fly over South Georgia in the middle of the Antarctic winter. I was able to take a seat in the cockpit of the same plane and was actually the only person at the controls for over half an hour, taking directions from the navigator! I drove Landrovers over some of the most difficult off-road terrain to be found anywhere. I raced Motocross over the same terrain. I learned how to hand code html on that old laptop while drinking beer on a small ship going through weather that makes that in the Perfect Storm movie look fairly mild. In the last couple of years down south, I had the chance to go to South Georgia in the Antarctic. Etc, etc, etc.
Throughout, I saved money, payed off all of my debts and had wild vacations. The beer flowed freely and I was a single guy taking part in adventures that few ever get the chance to even dream about. Sure the place is a little inhospitable at times but I’ll bet that people living on the beach in the Bahamas dream about seeing icebergs and wild penguins! Living at the extremities of civilisation, or even a little beyond, gives a person a better outlook on life. The inconsequential and trivial things, that stress out many, pass by unseen. I was able to learn how to enjoy life for real and to finally understand the enjoyment that can be found through learning, even though I have had to be the teacher. I read far more than the average Brit’ and a guzillion times more than most Americans. Last of all, by way of an offhand comment about the smell of penguins, I was able to meet the love of my life, Robin, and move to North central Wisconsin!
You’re in the somewhat rare position of having America as an adopted homeland, and therefore likely have insights about this country and/or its people that “we� don’t. Care to share some of them, good and bad?
One of the first things I ever noticed upon moving to the ‘Land of the free’ is that the population have no idea how lucky they are to have the very freedoms that they talk shit about! In the highly populated parts of the East and West coasts, the notion of true freedom has almost been forgotten. Thankfully it is still going strong in the Midwest and when you go to somewhere like Wyoming or the Dakotas, it becomes more evident.
Whether it is Janet Jackson’s tit or a lonely mad cow trying it’s best to escape the french speeking loonatics to the North, the American people seem happy to be led astray by a crazy media with dollar bills in its eyes. Mass hysteria is the name of the game and is all that the government needs to erode those precious freedoms even further. Just this week it has been again proved that a murderer can get away with it if he has enough money. At the same time there are kids, just out of school, getting 20 year sentences for having a pocket full of that same grass that a previous president didn’t inhale. An election was won by one party adding a vote on gay marriage to the ballots in religious areas, bringing out the god-squad in their droves!
America is almost asking to be missled and manipulated by politicians and big business. It is all about power and money. The electoral system is such that only the rich will ever get to power and once there will do their utmost to defend their riches and, if possible, enhance them, hence the situation in Iraq.
I was surprised to find that Americans work longer and harder than many of their foreign contempories. before visiting this country I was under the impression that Americans spent most of their time having fun and relaxing.
Beer in this country should be called something else. Sure there are plenty of microbreweries producing both good and bad beers. What I am talking about is the everyday stuff that you can find in every bar in the land. What do you people see in it? How do you get drunk on just a few of them?
Stop signs drive me nuts. Britain has ‘Give Way’ signs that equate to your ‘Yeild’ signs but no stop signs. Street name signs are made so small, if they even exist, that finding a previously unvisited location can be a nightmare.
Don’t even get me started on the health system and associated insurance industry.
Radio has done a wonderfull job of imposing artistic apartheid on the music scene. People like the fact that they can listen all day long to Religious Country or Hip Hop or whatever. They are then perplexed when new music comes from overseas that doesn’t seem to fit their categories. I wish that there was more variety on the radio. It would cure the current stagnation by opening peoples ears to other styles. I came here being used to hearing the likes of Frank Sinatra sharing the airwaves with Radiohead, Bob Marley and Kid Rock, new with old. A mixing of styles. The variety is what keeps music alive and most Americans are blissfully unaware of the huge range of wonderfull stuff available. I am thankfull that the BBC, and others across the pond, give broadband users the ability to listen online. When a band like Nirvana is introduced to the radio listening world on national radio in Great Britain (the late John Peel was responsible) before ever being played in the USA, you know there is something wrong.
Similar question, in a micro form; tell us about any odd cultural differences you and Robin have bumped into during your relationship.
We tend to find much amusement in the language differences. I like to tell Robin ‘There is no humor without U!’. Even when I use all American English, she tells me that, forgetting the accent, I construct my sentences in a non-American way. My spelling now varies between the two so that I might use ‘labor’ in one paragraph and “labour’ in the next. There are gramatical differences that also appear wrong to American eyes and numerous instances of my varying between UK and USA grammar litter these pages.
Some friends were assisting us with pruning back a large Black Walnut tree in our garden. He was wearing what I knew to be braces to hold his trousers up. His girlfriend was teasing him about how he looked kinda sexy in suspenders. With him being a burly motorcycle riding type, you can imaging the imagery that came to my mind! There are numerous sites that deal with the language difficulties such as The Best of British and I can assure you that we have put them to use on occasion.
Obviously there are many different foods that I have become familiar with over here. I have also been able to introduce my Wife, and others, to some British gastronomic delights, with varying degrees of success. Marmite and Branston being good examples.
I find myself perplexed by the tax system and health insurance here is just ridiculous.
In conclusion, the cultural differences sometimes add a little fun to our lives but as we do speek a similar language thay rarely cause any real problems. It would have been very different if I had been from a non-English speeking country.
There you have it. I could have typed away for far longer and I expect to have a critical eye put on these answers by my beloved. If you have a blog/website and want to carry this thing on, leave a comment just like I did. Thanks to Reid for pushing my two-fingered typing to it’s limits!
(You can leave a comment without being subjected to a grilling! If you don’t ask for questions, you won’t get ‘em!)