I've just discovered and signed up to the rather lovely iLike* service, which could be very simplistically described as a social-focussed plugin for iTunes that tracks your listening habits and makes recommendations. It's a really, really promising system, and one which I heartily recommend to any iTunes user on Mac OS X or Windows.

I only have one major gripe with the system: I don't like being reminded how few friends I have, and how socially incompetent I am. *Sob*



* How much must that domain have cost?!

The history of the iPod has been covered extensively, online, in print, and in broadcast journalism. But in all the feet of print and celluloid that's devoted to 'the true story of the iPod', one fact has never been address: how it got its name. The most you ever learn is that Apple CEO Steve Jobs came in one morning and told those involved of the new name for the new product.

I have a theory.

Okay, so the 'i' was a given in Apple's naming conventions ever since the iMac, and 'pod' works quite neatly as the idea of a little container – making the association perhaps between a seed pod in which the seeds are your tracks – but I think there's more.

What is the iPod? It's a portable audio device*. How do you shorten 'portable audio'; how do you make it into a handy handle, a brand that people can begin to associate with? One way is to take the 'p' from portable, and the 'odd' sound from the first syllable of 'audio'; and you get 'pod'.

Portable audio = p + 'aud' = pod = iPod

The disclaimer here should be obvious: I have no facts with which to substantiate this theory. It's pure speculation.

Do you think it's accurate, or even plausible? That's what the comments box is for!


* Yes, it now plays other media plus games, and acts as a 'PDA Lite', but originally, and even now, its primary function is as described.

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My phone uses, as its removable memory format, M2, Sony's latest and tiniest Memory Stick format. Let's do a bit of maths. The 1GB chip you see here is about the size of my thumbnail. That's the equivalent to 732 3½" floppy disks. That means that this little memory card – thumbnail, remember – holds as much data as you'd find in a stack of floppy disks roughly this high:

7' 2" (2.2m)

What's up with thaaaat?

Bleh, it's late for a school night, and I've degenerated into l33t. I blame the wine at the Roundhouse, which the label proudly proclaimed 'Good White'. (I didn't ask to try the 'Mediocre Red', or the 'Pants Rosé')

The "gig" was very good indeed, despite starting late because the "disk jockey" who was opening for Seu was apparently so overawed to be in his presence earlier in the day that he forgot to pack his records. Moderately important for a DJ, non?

The Roundhouse is a beautiful venue, though it was stuffed to capacity; anywhere that sells tortilla chips with blackened tomato salsa gets my vote. My better half and I did very much enjoy the novel experience of being at an event where the rest of the audience was broadly the same age as we are; more often that not, our middle-aged lives take us to the Colliseum or the National Theatre, at which we lower the average age by a good few percentge points. Night, night.

Despite living in London for four years plus, I've never, until today, visited Fortnum & Mason. It's quite spectacular, easily far grander than Harrods. We popped in to look at Christmas crackers – that our one job for the McRobbie Christmas Lunch – and were, shall we say, entertained to find that the first box we looked at, containing six crackers, was £500. Seriously. To further illustrate the point, take a look at the price tag of this five-inch tall bottle of vinegar:



Yes, three hundred quid for vinegar. OK, it has been on the planet a little under four times longer than I, but still. Three hundred pounds. F&M is quite beautiful, though, and I yearn for the day when that can be the supermarket at which I do my weekly shop.

We popped across the road so Jenny could show me the little fountains in the forecourt of the RCA. They're very pretty little things, a few inches tall, bubbling up all over the pavement, though with a bit of judicious hunkering, you can make them look a little more imposing.



Autumn is a very photogenic time of year, with the low-slanting sunlight and the warm reds of the leaves. Even shitty New Cross looks story-book.



And now I must dash, as we're off to see Seu Jorge, of Life Aquatic fame, at the Roundhouse, thanks to Ruth's hectic social life meaning that she was unable to use the two tickets she had bought.

Best. Day. Ever. After a month's hiatus – a month, people – my replacement hard disk finally arrived today. Let joy be unconfined. Seriously, four weeks going cold turkey on the whole laptop thing has not been pleasant, and I've been a more fractious and boring human being because of it.

But as if that weren't enough for one day, the tiny rural village (pop. ≈250) from which I hail was catapulted to national fame tonight, appearing on primetime BBC 2 in Coast. Not only that, but during the 1:42 segment, the UK was also made aware of the wonder that is the World Flounder Tramping Championships. I'm not quite sure I can do justice to getting across the slightly manic feeling that overtook me and had me yelling "Oh, my God" at the TV. Suffice to say that my excitement almost matched the moderately unbecoming enthusiasm my better half demonstrated for presenter Neil Oliver.

Tee-hee-hee! It's graffiti for the middle classes: invisible, except for when exposed to UV light. "More fun than making your own goat's cheese tortelloni." – Christopher Phin

This building in Tblisi has the air of being dreamed up with the help of Lego and some rather spiffing weed.

I really want to sketch my own furniture. I wonder if anyone has used this very techy and expensive system to construct big willies...

Oops, I did it again as you have never heard it before. The irony is that this is the 75-year-old original; I urge you to have a listen. Compare it to the version we all know and love, and to this wonderful reimagining.

The funeral of Tony Tyler, who has contributed to MacUser since its second issue, takes place today. It's astonshing how little you know someone until they die, at which point everyone starts talking about their life; in Tony's case, we are privileged to have illuminating obituaries in the Independent and the Guardian. MacUser will mark his passing in the next issue.

His was an astonishing life, and his dignified death should prove heartening to us all: his last words, addressed to his mother-in-law, were: “I just want you to know, for when it’s your turn, that this [dying] isn’t actually so bad.”

'Normal' gets a bad rap these days. At best, it carries connotations of the mundane; at worst, if we define something (or someone) as not normal, we're often making implicit judgements about the extent to which it's eligible for inclusion in wider society.

But here's the problem: 'normal' is quite a useful shorthand. I tend to base my experiences and judgements on generalities – as I think most of us do, though perhaps unconsciously – and being able to make reckonings based on what's normal and what's not is a very useful tool. We do it every day, whether it's choosing what clothes to wear or making major lifestyle choices.

My solution is to use 'typical' wherever I might use 'normal'. Yes, I sound like someone trying to coin a new politically-correct term, but I actually think it's much more useful, and genuinely more meaningful in this context, than 'normal'.

Describing something as typical is less loaded than describing something as normal. It's a straight statement of fact: "this act is typical of this group"; "typically, people wouldn't choose to adopt this lifestyle"; "a teenager who choses to watch Postman Pat on continuous loop is not typical."

I think it's a helpful distinction. Do you agree?


[I'm forcing myself to make this site be more than a litany of my whinging. Nobody in their right mind would want to read 24-hourly updates describing What I Did Over The Last 24 Hours, particularly since my days consist largely of eating, commuting and working. Hence a concerted effort on my part to post regularly for a while, and not to indulge in so much navel-gazing.]