Imagine, for a moment, that your boss asks you to write a very detailed report on what you've been doing. Then imagine that it has to cover every conceivable detail. Then imagine that everything you did was right. Then imagine that your work covers three years. Then imagine that you've got one of those anal retentive perfectionist personalities, and so even your crappy diagrams have to look perfect. Then imagine that your boss isn't even going to look at that report. That's a thesis in a nutshell.

I'm writing again.

First of all, I performed my first rick-roll today. It was glorious. There was a message board on Facebook, chock-full of pro and anti seal-hunt sentiment. Emotions were high, arguments specious. I felt that I should do my best to add to the discourse on the board, so I found my favourite link to Rick, and pasted this message in:

I think anyone that supports the seal hunt should see this first hand to see how cruel you can be to small animals:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU

I then sit back, and wait for the replies to come - you know, someone would get it, and figuratively scream in agony as they get rolled. There will be general ROFLing. Instead I get nothing. I give up, and go to get a coffee. When I return, I'm the recipient of a message from some random person called Dylan:

I'm very curious as to whether or not that video is ANOTHER video made by PETA or the Sea Shepherd organization to spread their lies and propaganda. I'm also curious as to why you'd bother joining a group that supports the seal hunt when you so obviously do not. You should educate yourself

Yes, Rick Astley is a member of PETA.

Then, a random link appeared to me in my newsreader. It's a link to the exhibition for Stanley Donwood in Japan. Linked off there is a blog. It's about his creative process, and I save it in my newsreader to have a read of later.

And then I write this post. You see, I realised something. The internet is the great democratiser, it gives anyone with a browser a voice. It's communication on a massive scale. However, the truth of the matter is you don't want to talk to anyone. What you really want to do is listen to people who do know what they're talking about. People with some kind of authority. That's the real magic. Right now, I can read the musings of an artist, and learn about his creative process as it happens. It's there, available to me, raw and direct. It allows modes of communication between people that would never otherwise have existed. However, it also introduces noise. Noise like debates over seal hunting - essentially emotional and moral debates, which are repeated ad nauseum on an annual basis, when the latest flock of high school graduates decide they want a cause to give meaning to their life.

No, I'll care about sealing when I find someone whose business it is to know about this. Someone who is actually hunts seals for a living. A scientist who is caring for the ethical treatment of the animals. Until then, I could not care less about the ramblings of activists one way or the other. Unless someone is stupid enough to give them power, in which case, it's my business to make sure they don't screw me over.

I know, there's a great deal of irony about posting this rant up on the interwebs. But a) you don't have to read this and b) I wanted to gloat over a fantastic rick-roll.

For those of you who haven't been talking to me on Faceblerg, the blog is back, after a small technical hiccup. I still don't have time to write anything - but at least you can read the old stuff again!

For the past couple of weeks, I've been avoiding writing Word documents or opening up Excel spreadsheets as my installation of Office had mysteriously died. I took the time out on the weekend to prepare my laptop for a full reinstall, since I figured the machine was getting massively hosed from all the different things I've been trying out on it.

I ended up not doing the reinstall, as I kind of wanted to put an encrypted home directory (I fear the Government) on the machine, which would mean archiving off my iPhoto library, which would mean spending US$25 on a tool to do that. All of which was a bit much for a Sunday afternoon. So, I stuck with the suboptimal install on the machine.

It's lucky I actually did that, since I finally got sick of the problem, and googled myself a solution. It turns out, the problem lies with updating the prebinding. Basically, prebinding is a performance hack used to make dynamic libraries not so dynamic, and is generally a very good thing. Unfortunately, a number of Java dynamic libraries (from older versions it seems) were breaking the prebinding, so the whole prebinding operation was failing, resulting in our lovely Rosetta applications failing too.

The fact that I can actually go in to the console, play around with prebindings, and fix my computer when it stops working optimally is one of the reasons I love using Mac OS X. It's like the best Linux ever.

Like some kind of zombie, I'm back if only just to let my dear RSS enabled readers know that I'm still alive. It's summer, and I've been pretty busy. I went to Barcelona last month, which was a massive hoot. Last week, I was in the slightly colder Dublin (no pictures I'm afraid). Those of you waiting for an overly long blog post or essay, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait a bit longer. The abundance of summer BBQs and other outdoors activities (coupled with an increased workload) mean that I don't have time to write my usual drivel. If you're after poorly formulated drivel, you can always hit me up on Facebook, where you'll find craftily crafted status messages written in the third person. I'm considering the implications of taking Facebookisms into the real world - talking in the third person, running around with a spray can tagging people. Following these people around for hours, only to get bored, and then to start following their (good looking) friends around, until you finally find yourself amongst a group of people banding together to try and get someone's child named Batman.

Last week I didn't spend much time hooked up to the digital sewer pipe that is the internet. Instead, I spent a week in the Netherlands, ostensibly for the EUROCarbDB annual meeting, but in reality it was yet another excuse to meet up with the Glyco-cabal that I've been getting to know over the past 5 years, and chat over a few tasty Belgian beverages.

We had our group meeting in a place called WageningenNetherlands. This place is known as the Life sciences city - a surprisingly accurate tag-line, since it's a largely drab city with a tiny social and entertainment district, and often smells of chicken and cow manure. On the upside, at least I didn't have to pay for being there. It was of course, good to meet up with the old crowd again - I keep running into Niclas all over the place, Tina was around, and I got some good time in with the other team members in EUROCarbDB. We had a pretty successful meeting, and in an uncharacteristic wellspring of optimism, I left thinking that the whole thing could actually work.

A quick note about drugs in the Netherlands. For a country that's meant to be all liberal about drug usage, I saw hardly any people smoking in the country. It's not that smoking was banned in all these places - there were ashtrays at every single table I sat down at - but it just seems like people don't particularly like smoking. I'd like to say that's a clear message that prohibition and control doesn't work, but I think it's more of a sign that the Dutch care about their health too much. It must be all that bike riding that they do.

After spending time in Wageningen, Alessio and I stuck around in the Netherlands to hit Utrecht and Amsterdam. Joining us on our little adventure was Anita and Sarah - from HeidelbergDeutschland. Getting out from Wageningen, I found the rest of the Netherlands to be a much cooler place. I've been singing the praises of UtrechtNetherlands to anyone who will listen. Like my fawning over Gothenburg, Utrecht is a city with a really good atmosphere. It's primarily a student city, so walking around you see so much street art all over the place, it's a real feast for the eyes. Also - as Anita mentioned to me - although Heidelberg is a pretty town, it's more of a panoramic pretty town. All the good pictures of Heidelberg really need the castle or the old bridge in them. However, with Utrecht, you get the feeling that it's a bunch of really interesting smaller spaces. Spaces that reminded me of LondonUnited Kingdom 20 years ago. Walking around on the streets, amongst the buildings, I could have imagined myself riding my bike there.

AmsterdamNetherlands is another city altogether. It's cool, and it's bizarre, and it's big. It's not my favourite place though. I didn't feel as immediately comfortable in Amsterdam as I did in Utrecht. The big issue was that I fell into a bit of a tourist trap there. You go and do all the touristy things, and you end up missing out on the real value in Amsterdam, which is their great subcultures and street art scenes. To get into that you really need to know someone who is not only living in the city, but also is into the scenes themselves. I guess Amsterdam is like Radiohead. Both are great, but you really need to spend a lot of time with them to fully appreciate their character.

What you don't need time to get into is the Koninginnendag celebrations which were going on in the country on the 30th. The streets were filled with people, parties blasting out of every open window, and every second person with a turntable, massive speakers and stacks of wax. We spent a fair amount of time wandering the town, getting a feel for the whole thing. It's certainly an experience. The flea-markets during the day were pretty interesting, although I think you're better off going to Etsy to get your handcrafted goods. I ended up picking up a mid-century gas mask bag, along with a real life working gas mask to go with it. You never know, it might be useful some time in the future.