Richard Giles Blog

For most of my life Red Dog has been a legend. We were born in the same year, call the same town home, and I feel like we have traveled the same amount. He just happens to be much more famous than I, even if he was a humble dog. He’s a symbol of both where I come from and of the strength and love that I strive to be. He’s a legend.

So, it should be no surprise that the moment I saw his name blazon across a novella in a cafe bookstore today, that I bought it and read it within hours. It was only after I returned home that I realised that it is written by the author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernières.

Red Dog was a mate for the whole of the North West of Western Australia during the late 1970s. Wandering through towns, hitching a ride with the locals, and sitting outside of shop fronts for the welcome cool breeze afforded by the air conditioning inside. I remember being a proud young kid (perhaps at the age of six or seven) when my parents told me he visited their store one day.

Red Dog is a novella filled with fifteen short snippets of his life. Each gleaned from de Bernières research while in Western Australia for two weeks. It tells a tale of a brave, loving but independent dog who captured the hearts of many. In the tales a real sense of personality explodes to life to give the reader a great impression of life in and around the Pilbara, an area bordered by a red harsh desert and the cool blue Indian Ocean, and how Red Dog fostered such love.

The novella does not seem to be for children, but is written in an innocent manner that would make it approachable by the like. It does not seem to be for children because although it is heartwarming, it is a sad tale. Red Dog spent half of his life searching for his owner, John, who died one night without Red Dog’s knowledge. On his travels up and down the coast of Western Australia he made many friends, who all accepted that he was a transient character, that would be gone one morning, to return days, months or maybe years later. Red Dog died in 79 after he was poisoned by unknown people for unknown reasons. This broke the hearts of many, including an eight year old boy born in Dampier.

Each of the fifteen stories could be read individually, and if chosen carefully could suit a bed time tale for children. They would love his light hearted adventures and his amusing, though smelly, habits. The work as a whole is not powerful for its artistic prowess, but because it’s based on a wonderful true story. de Bernières does take some liberty in allowing some fiction, and in his words, ?The stories I have told here are all based upon what really happened to him, but I have invented all of the characters, partly because I know very little about the real people in Red Dog’s life, and partly because I would not want to offend any of them by misrepresenting them. The only character who is ‘real’ is John.?.

It’s because Red Dog is a legend, that I had to take the time out, and although not a theme I’d normally cover in this Blog, mention the tail. For those people here to read about technology, please forgive my indulgence.

Over-all a simple, easy to read book about a marvelous Dog. Nothing in-depth or literary stupendous, but good for a quick read. The story means more to me than most because I’ve known of Red Dog since I was a pup.

I’ve upgraded to Movable Type 2.21 to allow me to use TrackBack.

TrackBack is a feature that allows Bloggers to see who is linking to particular posts. Why is that important? Well, it allows everyone to see links that are relevant to one another. So if anyone else using TrackBack links to this post, you’ll see it in the TrackBack link at the bottom. If the topic is important enough, there eventually will be many posts on many Blogs linking to each other. This allows ease of navigation, because it reduces the need for doing searches. All the links are there for browsers to see and follow.

Some (and I’m sure not all) potential repercussions for this in the future, if other Blog tools implement the feature, will be :

1. A tighter knit community in the Blogosphere.
2. Quicker propagation of news.
3. Abilities to see the flow of information through mapping TrackBack posts.

This type of feature could truly revolutionise Journalism. Steve Outing in his article Board The Weblog Bandwagon Now, Please, recommends that the newspaper industry take Weblogs seriously and begin to use them. Now imagine, if they also add TrackBack to their news articles that they currently write on their news web sites. They would expand their community, and even gain some free jounalists who are willing to write Blog entries expanding on their article.

I’d like to see business take this a step further. It occurred to me the other day just how powerful the Internet could be to a business if it knew how to use it well. I believe that 99% of big business have no idea how they can seriously reach their customers via the Internet. Most are still stuck in the mid-nineties, publishing web sites like they are brochures or catalogues. Amazon has taken the next step with their review feature on items.

My suggestion is that corporations should employee an Internet Community Developer, for want of a better name. This person would be responsible for growing an online community of customers. That doesn’t mean sell products or services to the customers, but get in touch with them, learn from them. At the same time an expert in the field could increase the companies exposure, hopefully for the better, for free.

A fantastic way to start such an endeavor is create a company Blog. Turn on the Comments and LinkBack features, employ some of my techniques in my Attracting Traffic To You Weblog (Increasing Blog Hits) post, and start communicating. Done right, people searching on the Net for information on the company, or more importantly the product or service, or ways to complain, etc. would find the Blog.

“In London today a gang war broke out over a territorial dispute. However, the territory was not physical space, but a wireless cloud of bandwidth. The dispute erupted when a Wi-fi user of a local free network connection accused another of dropping in on his wave. “Not only did this newbie drop in, he launched a p2p flood.”, said one of the local Wibos.

Several laptops were broken in the fight, and one Wibo was taken to hospital for the removal of a PCMCIA Card. Residents of the casual cafe strip expressed some distress at the increase chalk markings that have appeared, and the rise of threatening looking white bespeckled males.”

OK. Maybe not. But I think it’s worth while setting some ground rules for the use of the Wi-fi freenets that are popping up, especially with the increased profile via warchalking.

1. Do not drop in. Don’t jump on a network and hog the bandwidth. Sure fire ways of annoying other Wibos is launching a file sharing client (like dc++), or starting an FTP session to download large files.
2. No spamming. Don’t use a freenet to send unsolicited email.
3. Acknowledge other Wibos. Lets make it a community rather than just a technology.
4. Give respect to gain respect.

Concept borrowed from The Tribal Law Surfriders code of ethics by Robert Conneeley.

Any other suggestions, most welcome.

Cringely has an article on Burst taking Microsoft to court. He has an interesting bit on Bill’s competitive nature.

“In the early days of Microsoft, one of the popular games was to see how late the boys could leave work for the airport and still make their flights. These weren’t people who were habitually late, they were playing a game. The eventual winner was Bill Gates, of course, but to win he had to abandon his car at the departures curb.” .

Looks like some interesting technology over at the Burst’s Web Site.

Faster-Than-Real-Time-Streaming for video or audio.

– Spoiler Warning –

Review, 25 June 2005.

It’s only three years since Spielberg and Cruise entertained us with the first Minority Report that was based on a Phillip K. Dick short story. This year Minority Report II (MRII) maintains the feel and thrills that made the first one successful at the box office and a smash hit DVD.

Minority Report was released in June 2002 and was moderately successful in theaters despite the good reception from critics. The story followed John Anderton (Tom Cruise), a Detective for the Pre-Crime Agency who had a squeaky clean record of arresting people for crimes that they were about to commit. It was the successful release of the DVD with awarded special features that won the best reception from the public.

Spielberg uses the same blend of action and special effects to bring us the sequel. The year is now 2061, seven years since the Pre-Crime agency is shutdown. The three Pre-Cogs, psychics incredibly attuned to future crime, Agatha (Samantha Morton), Arthur (Michael Dickman), and Dashiell (Matthew Dickman) who were left in hiding at the end of the original movie, are suddenly abducted by unknowns. Dashiell luckily escapes and goes hunting for Detective John Anderton, who helped Agatha expose the murderer of her mother.

Like the Minority Report, the special effects do not distract from the movie. Unlike Star Wars Episode III, like its predecessor, that overloaded the viewer with overly colourful special effects, MRII uses them to enhance the movie, and although there are plenty they blend into the futuristic world seamlessly. As with the first there is a feast of futuristic insight awaiting a hungry audience for a peek into the future. For this new movie Spielberg collaborated with well know visionary futurist Richard Giles to add an incredible authenticity to Washington D.C.’s mid-twenty first century look and feel.

The cinematography echoes from the original, with the washed out dreamy blue that permeates the whole movie. A tribute to the lives of the Pre-Cogs who live most of it out within themselves. Seeing the most disturbing part of the future in their dreams that are perpetually like viewing a broken DVD that skips between fast forward, rewind and slow motion.

The first movie built the characters up well. Allowing us the insight into how Anderton felt about his lost son. This gives more scope with new characters as well as building on the old. Cruise, along with the supporting cast, again provide some believable performances, and add great strength to the characters. Anderton, who now has a six year old child with his wife, is found living his life out quietly as a security consultant. Dashiell convinces him that he needs his help to find the two Pre-Cogs before they are used for the genocide that he sees in his psychic collages. Dashiell is reluctant to involve any government agencies because of his belief that they are involved in the abduction.

Using his psychic ability in the same fashion that Agatha did in the original movie to help John avoid the Pre-Crime Officers, Dash helps Anderton track the abducted. Anderton also uses his underground connections, such as the eye doctor from the first movie, to avoid the governments grasp. Already the Police, the CIA and the FBI are chasing them because of the belief that John is the kidnapper.

It turns out that a new secret government agency is responsible, and is in the process of cloning the Pre-Cogs for military and anti-terrorist purposes. Although they are only seventy to eighty percent accurate in their agreement of future events, the reason for the Pre-Crime units disbandment, this hit rate is well worth it to the military agency. They use genetic enhancements to allow the Pre-Cog Clones to see future world events rather than localised murders.

As critics pointed out in 2002, MR was well timed to make for interesting moral discussions that were raised with President Bush’s announcement of his intention to create the Department of Homeland Security. How could a person or terrorist be arrested if they had not yet committed a crime. The sequel is equally well timed being released after the Department of Homeland Security is being questioned about its methods in tracking and arresting suspected terrorists.

The same privacy issues are highlighted here as was in Minority Report. Eye scans used to track residents of the city, lock downs of motorways to capture suspects. It raises interesting issues that come months after the release of the American ID Card. How long will it take for advertisers to use the technology to track and match adverts like those displayed across the walls of the D.C. buildings. It also raises further questions for the use of cloning.

The film ends with Dash dieing in his attempt to assist Anderton in saving Agatha and Arthur. Both are safe, and a Government investigation is commissioned to look into the practice of the Special Military and Anti-Terrorist Offensive Department. A task force is established to work with the Pre-Cogs and Clones. The aim is to find a way to integrate or segregate these humans with/from the world. Ethically and morally they can not be “destroyed”, but they pose a threat to the world with their ability to see the future and be exploited in fashions akin to giving a weapon to a baby.

Both movies seem to draw the movie out a little longer than needed. On reflection both endings highlight the moral issues a little more than a truncated version. Its also pleasing to see that Spielberg manages to continue the dark feel of this movie, similar to the first, something I believe he has fallen short on with movies like A.I..

I enjoyed Minority Report immensely, and had concerns that the sequal would not compare favourably. It’s good to see that this one doesn’t just re-make the first and is willing to explore new moral ground.It does capture the best of the original, while adding a new angle to the story, exploring the posibilities of using genectics to provide for destruction, the yin to the originals yang. Both films are rewarding mentally and provide a enough physical fodder to satisfy any action buff.

Blogs are individual, each one being an outlet in some fashion for the owner. Some are diaries of personal accounts, others for news. Like clothing, some extroverts enjoy wearing raincoats over hot pants on hot summers days, while others slap on a good old khaki pair of shorts and the always plain t-shirt. In the same vain, some creators are not after attracting record amounts of hits, after all, who’s to say their web server will cope with the traffic. A quick mention on slashdot.org could bring the site to a grinding halt, a symptom now called the slashdot effect or Slashdotted. Still, its wonderful to think that what you have to say is valued by the world. Without some type of advertising your unlikely to end up with a single hit.

This is a guide for Blog owners on how to gain exposure. It’s not suggested that these are hard and fast rules. It’s also not suggested that these are the only ways to attract precious eye balls. Dancing hamsters or a game of shoot the Microsoft Word Paper Clip can do wonders. This is a simple guide that will get you started, some simple methods that are the foundations for site traffic.

Unique Blogs.

The most important technique for attracting an audience is your Blog’s uniqueness and the level of interest it holds for the reader. There are literally thousands of Blogs, and with the recent popularity and the kamikaze blitz by the media, the number is growing rapidly by the day. Personal diaries, unless you are incredibly creative or an amazingly interesting individual, are unlikely to gain much popularity beyond friends, family and the occasional voyeur straying past for a quick glimpse of teenage webcams. News sites, without interesting and unique information are likely to have the same undramatic effect, begging to become the latest casualty in the 404 Not Found memorial cemetery. This isn’t to suggest that these sites are bad, and unwelcome. Quite the opposite, since that is what makes the Internet and Blogs such a great culture. We publish what we want. It’s just very unlikely that you will sustain any degree of notoriety and large number of site hits.

Neuroprosthesis News is a very unique site. There aren’t too many sites on the topic, so as far as the Internet goes, it makes it a major resource on the topic of neuroprosthesis. In a June 2002 post, the owner of the site pointed out some very effective links it had gained from some major news sites. All due to its uniqueness.

?Six Degrees of Separation

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