locusmeus

After reading this article on Jakob Nielsen’s view on Web 2.0, I found this comic by Joshua Porter particularly funny

So, what does taking a day off work have to do with art, and where do the rhododendrons come in?

In order to explain that, let’s first list the facts:

• work has been busy lately (which is good btw, so no complaints there!)
• the internet holds more info than just work related
• the internet holds even more info that is work related (in some way or other)
• I’m not very good at going to bed on time
• caffeine doesn’t exactly help with that
• I like all the CSI series that are on TV almost daily here
• there’s always a reason to switch on the computer (be it checking email or looking something up)

From the above we can conclude that I work long hours, that even if I’m not working I’ll spend time at the computer, and that to “get away from the screen”, I watch telly (!). (and I thought I was intelligent!)

Add to that the caffeine effect (I can’t stand coffee, but as it happens some clever businessman(m/f) came up with these cheap cans of tasty fizzy water that allow for non-coffee drinkers like myself to still get their daily dose), and it’s clear how I don’t get to bed on time very often.

So, in order to get some much needed rest, I need to make sure that I’m not around anything remotely resembling a computer (from what I’ve read I’m lucky to not have a CrackBerry … yet). Also it would help if there wouldn’t be a TV, and to make the circumstances near-perfect: no bright coloured cans of energy drink.

There are of course plenty of places in this world that comply with those requirements, but not many of them are currently within my reach. One of them is though: my mother’s place. She has a TV, but no cable and I have a different taste in DVDs than she has, and there’s no computer in the house. As for the caffeine, I could have bought some at the local super, but I do have some willpower, so I didn’t!

Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Yep. Except I also have two kids who have to go to school (which is two hours travel (taxi + train + tube) away from my mother’s), as well as a couple of clients with more or less urgent projects. That’s where the art comes in. I worked, calculated, planned, waited, and announced: worked to get the most urgent work done, calculated how much I could do before the start of the kids’ spring holiday, planned my visit to combine with my mother’s own schedule, waited (while working) till I was sure it would all fit together in time, and then announced to the clients I’d be away for a couple of days. Given how busy I was already before I had to invest the time to plan all that to get away, I’d call it an art – the art of making time to plan to make time to get some rest

So, what’s with the rhododendrons then? They’re blooming in my mother’s garden, and looked very nice with fresh raindrops on them – so I took some pics. That’s all

Tell me, what do you do to get away from the screen?

Yesterday I was watching[1] an introduction to the use of Silverlight from the MIX event. Netflix hired Avenue A | Razor Fish to create a “cross-platform media player” based on Silverlight, and demonstrated the result by showing the Netflix movie player on a Windows pc first, and then on a Mac as well. In the words of Darin Brown of Avenue A | Razor Fish with Neil Hunt of Netflix acting as the surprised and impressed person:

“This is about the universal web, so what about this experience on a Mac”
“Did you say on a Mac?”
“I said, on a Mac!”

Although the audience seemed to like this ‘cross-platformness’, the first thing I thought was what about Linux? Would it support Linux too?

Roy Schestowitz says Silverlight is evil, as it does not support Linux, and apparently it never will. So, when Darin said:

“With Microsoft’s .NET framework, the Expression Studio as well as Visual Studio, we now have all the tools in our hands for creative and technical control.”

this may not mean what he claimed it to mean, “unprecedented collaboration between our designers and our developers”, but rather creative and technical control over the web, by excluding the free and open source Linux platform.

So, as a not so technical person I have a question for all you techies out there: if Microsoft really wanted, would they be able to create Silverlight so that it could be supported on Linux too?

Update June 22:

Silverlight will run on Linux too. Good news I guess

[1] I had to use IE7 to watch it, as Firefox crashes every time I click the play button on the video – be warned!